
OassESSSSZ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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SINBAD AND HIS FRIENDS 



BY 
SIMEON STRUNSKY 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1921 






Copyright, 1921 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



tL 



CCi 25 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 



§)CI.A630062 



PREFACE 

Despite superficial indications to the contrary, the pur- 
pose of the present volume is a very serious one. The book 
is divided into two parts which are much more intimately 
connected than the reader may suspect at first sight. Part 
I deals with the adventures of a journalist named Sinbad 
in the city of Bagdad in the dim past of the year -19 17 of 
the Christian era. Part II deals with the adventures of 
an American journalist named Williams in the New York 
of the year 192 1. 

A person might well ask: What connection can there 
be, on the one hand, between Sinbad, with his friends the 
Caliph, the Principal Censor, the Minister of High and 
Low Finance, the Chief Secretary of Ways and Detours, 
the Princess Ayesha, and other exotic figures, and, on the 
other hand, the perfectly commonplace Williams with his 
equally normal friends? The answer is simple. 

Across the gulf of Space and Time the reader will dis- 
cern the ties of a common humanity between the two men. 
He will be struck with a definite resemblance between the 
thoughts, the feelings, and even the concrete problems of 
two epochs and two civilizations. If Williams, in our own 
town and in our own day, seems to be thinking and say- 
ing very much the same things as Sinbad in his alien 
environment, it is not at all a case of mere repetition. It 
is only a case of the fundamental sameness of human 
nature. 

In this the unity of the book consists. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 



Inflated 



sinbad 

Story of the March of Democracy .... 
Story of the Bolshevik Middleman and the Ca 

liph's Relapse .... 
Story of the Caliph's Troubles 
Story of the Suppressed Desire and the 

Circulation 

Story of the True Believers . 

Story of Fatima and the Bond-Salesman 

Story of the Entangled Legislator 

Story of the Bewildered Bridegroom 

Story of the Unpleasant Task 

Story of the Caliph and Apawamis 

Story of the Troubled Four . 

Story of the Troubled Four (Continued) 

Story of the Women Who Stood Still 

Story of the Cost of Living . 

Story of the Women Who Did Not Stand Still 

Story of the Barmecide and the After-Dinner 

Speaker 

Story of the Caliph and the Renting Agent . 



PACE 

3 

8 
13 

19 

25 

30 
36 
41 
46 

5i 

57 
62 

67 
73 
79 

84 
89 



vi CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Story of the Principal Censor and the Ulcer- 
ated Bicuspid 94 

Story of the Congested War Workers . .100 
Story of What the Women Will Wear . . 105 
Story of What the Women Will Wear {Con- 
tinued) 110 

Story of the Caliph and the Burnt Cakes . 116 
Story of the Two Weary Traffickers . . 121 
Story of Scheherazade's Sisters . . . .126 
Story of Scheherazade's Sisters {Continued) . 133 
Story of the Caliph and the Modified Gary 

System 137 

Story of the Discouraged Oracle . . .142 
Story of the Council of Elders and the Newer 

Immigration 147 

Story of the Caliph and the Cosmic Urge . 152 
Story of Sinbad's Departure from Bagdad for 

Points North and West 157 



PART II 

williams 

They 165 

Cheerful Givers 171 

Realism 176 

Knights at the Cross Roads 181 

Wisdom of the East 186 

On the Floor of the Library 19 1 



CONTENTS vii 

PAGE 

Trumpet Calls to Duty 196 

The Reindeer and the Will to Believe . . 201 
The Filing Cabinet and the Child . . . .206 

Voice of the People 211 

Adventures of the Literal Minded Pedestrian . 216 

Our Higher Selves 221 

The Dangerous Age 226 

Paternal Affection — a Peril "232 

Surgical 237 

Standing Room Only 242 

Farmers 247 

Complexes in Orion .252 

Fallacy of Distance 257 



PART I 
SINBAD 



NOTE 

Sinbad's story begins rather abruptly. But it is not at 
all difficult to reconstruct the substance of the missing 
chapters. Plainly Sinbad is the name bestowed by the 
people of Bagdad, for some unknown reason, upon an 
American newspaper man who arrived in the capital of 
Mesopotamia shortly after that country had thrown in its 
fortunes with the Allies in the war against the Empire of 
Madagascar. When the story opens, Sinbad has evidently 
won a place of confidence and friendship with pretty nearly 
everybody in Mesopotamia. 



STORY OF THE MARCH OF DEMOCRACY 

1HAVE seen the Commander of the Faithful in his 
thoughts before this, but never in such somber mood.. 
His eyes were upon me as I made the customary triple 
prostration, but only when I was in my usual place on the 
edge of the rug did he speak. 

" Draw nearer, Sinbad," he said gently. 

I moved forward to within one meter (39.37 inches) 
from the royal divan, beyond which it is given only to the 
Head Gardener and the Chief of the General Staff to ap- 
proach. 

" I was thinking, Sinbad, of this sorry business of king- 
ship," he said. " We rulers have fallen on evil days. As 
our poet Firdusi has said, ' We are such stuff as dreams are 
made of, and our little life — ' " 

But at this moment the curtains of the royal apartment 
were swept apart and the Principal Censor threw himself 
before his master's feet. 

" Sire," he cried, " a woeful thing has happened. That 
unprincipled dog of an editor of the Bazaar Gazette has 
given aid and comfort to the enemy by stating in the Ship- 
ping Intelligence column that high water at the port of 
Basra next Wednesday will be at 11:52 A. M. and 10:38 
P. M." 

The Caliph looked long and fixedly at the Principal 
Censor. 

3 



4 SINBAD 

" Unquestionably this calls for hanging and quartering," 
he said. " What puzzles me is whether it should be you 
or the editor of the Bazaar Gazette." 

" Mercy, Indescribable One," pleaded the Censor. 

" Very well," said the Caliph. " Let it be the editor." 

And when the Censor had departed: 

" I was saying, Sinbad, that time has made naught of us 
kings. I sit here and think, What am I? And the answer 
is, Shadow and dust. They think they please me by saying 
the Caliph can do no wrong. They leap up and shout, 
'The Caliph is dead! Long live the Caliph! ' But the 
man who cannot err, the man who cannot even die, oh Sin- 
bad, is he a man at all? " 

u More and less than that, your Majesty," I said. " You 
are one in a glorious succession — " 

" Aye, that is it," he cried. " Our fame, we kings, is 
that of a link in the chain. We live in history as Selim 
the Bald, as Saladin the Bowlegged, as Ali the Henpecked, 
so distinguished from other Selims, Saladins, and Alis. 
The future will know me as Harun the Fifty-ninth, and 
little else. Harun the Fifty-ninth," he repeated bitterly. 
u How does that strike your ear? " 

" Ineffable One," I said, M since you so command, it 
sounds like a subway station." 

" Precisely," he said. " And our business is like our 
names. Once upon a time kings were kings. To-day we 
wear silk hats at garden parties, we bestow the order of 
Kappa Upsilon on distinguished visitors, and every little 
while we abdicate. As Saadi has said: ; Our little systems 
have their day. they have their day and cease to be.' " 



THE MARCH OF DEMOCRACY 5 

" Yet your subjects offer up prayers for you and they 
call you Father of your People," I said. 

" To my face, yes, but how is it — " 

Once more the curtains were torn apart and the Principal 
Censor precipitated himself into our midst. 

" Sire," he ejaculated, holding up his scissors and mucilage 
pot as if in tribute, " the editor of the Bagdad Buzzer, in a 
leading article on the financial situation, refers to the Grand 
Vizier as an ass." 

The Caliph's brow darkened. 

" Well, it is a fact, is it not? " he asked. 

" Your pardon, Magnificence," cried the Censor. " That 
is all the more reason why the statement should be sup- 
pressed. And besides, August One, it discriminates against 
the other members of your Cabinet." 

The Caliph sighed. 

" Very well, censor it," he said. 

" But the question is how, Illuminance? " said the Cen- 
sor. " Shall we make it read ' The is an ass,' or 

1 The Grand Vizier is an ? ' " 

The Caliph pondered. 

" Run the two versions one after the other," he said. 
" That will serve to confuse the enemy." 

The Principal Censor eliminated himself backward. The 
Caliph moistened his lips with his tongue and went on: 

" You were saying, Sinbad? Oh, yes, about the people 
praying for their kings. But that, too, is form. The people 
will pray for anybody that collects the taxes. Take now 
the one ruler among the Infidels who does pretend to the 
manners and outlook of a king. I refer to Wullahim, the 



6 SINBAD 

Kaisar-il-Alleman. His nobles bow down before him and 
call him Viceregent of Allah. But let him touch these 
nobles and landowners in their interests and what then? 
' Give us a fifty per cent, tariff on pickled tripe, Anointed 
of Allah,' they cry, ' or thy throne goes rolling into the 
dust! ' That is kingship in these parlous days, my Sin- 
bad." 

I forbore to intrude on his sorrow, and contented myself 
with scratching the tip of my nose, which itched painfully. 
He spoke with sudden eagerness. 

" Tell me about this new fashion they call democracy, 
Sinbad. Why do nations go mad over it? Is it cheaper 
than kingship? " 

" Far otherwise, your Majesty," I told him. 

" That is strange," he said. " We, with our palaces and 
establishments, come high for the people." 

" But what is that to the cost of electing the Chief Mag- 
istrate of a republic? " I said. " Just figure it out for 
yourself, Sublime One. Your Civil List is how much? " 

" Three million sequins a year," he said. 

" And your Majesty's unctuous reign has endured how 
long? " 

" Twenty-five years," he said. 

" That makes seventy-five million sequins," I said, after 
making the calculation in my note-book. " Now, in some 
republics they will have had six elections of a Chief Mag- 
istrate in twenty-five years, at a cost of at least twenty- 
five million sequins an election, if you count the actual 
campaign expenditure, the service of taking the poll of 
twenty million voters, the stagnation of business, and the 



THE MARCH OF DEMOCRACY 7 

pitiful waste of white paper in the form of editorials, au- 
thorized interviews, and disavowals of such interviews. Fig- 
ure out for yourself, Majesty, the money cost for a people 
that goes every four years to the verge of nervous prostra- 
tion." 

The Caliph's eyes glittered. 

" Now by the Shaven Eyebrows of the Dumb Hermit of 
Kandahar," he cried, "but that must be the lifel Once 
every four years! I would — " But he checked himself. 

" Well, then, Sinbad, does democracy work more smoothly 
than kingship? " he said. 

" Your indulgence, Unparalleled One," I said. " Democ- 
racy operates like a flat wheel on a rural trolley car in the 
dewy silences of a July night." 

" Then why—" 

" Democracy, oh King," I said, in my most impressive 
manner, like the President of the University at the com- 
mencement exercises of the School of Journalism, " De- 
mocracy is even like Marriage. For people are always say- 
ing of these two, Is it a Failure? Is it a Success? And 
before they know it their fate is upon them. So, too — " 

" Majesty," gasped the Principal Censor, sliding in feet 
foremost, " the editor of the Evening Turban is spreading 
abroad an impression of national disunion by speaking of 
the irrepressible sex-conflict — " 

The Caliph flung his damask cushion, and hit the Col- 
lector of Widows' Pensions, who chanced to enter at that 
moment. 



STORY OF THE BOLSHEVIK MIDDLEMAN 
AND THE CALIPH'S RELAPSE 

DURING my first fortnight in Bagdad the visible 
stocks of honey in the bazaars were almost wiped 
out. Simultaneously prices attained an unprecedented 
level. Khorassan fancy prime rose from 13 maravedis the 
pound to 58 maravedis. Nineveh middlings, the great 
staple of the poor, went up from 7 maravedis to 46. Among 
the populace of the Maghreb or West Side, which is the 
workingmen's quarter, there was seething discontent. So 
the trusty Mesrour reported to the Commander of the 
Faithful. 

Thereupon his Majesty, having wrathfully plucked at 
his beard for some time, sent for the Pomegranate and Jam 
Director and the Minister of Indeterminate Equations, who 
were jointly investigating the problem of high prices and 
scarcity. As it happened, the Pomegranate and Jam Di- 
rector was out of town in connection with his dehydrated 
fig campaign, but the Minister of Indeterminate Equa- 
tions declared that he was ready to answer all questions. 
To that end he brought with him three camel-loads of 
wholesale prices, a complete set of blue-prints in a piano 
case, and a twelve-cylinder counting machine. 

" Abu Ramshyd," said his Majesty, after the operation 
of the counting machine had been explained to him, " why 
should the price of honey have increased 700 per cent.? " 

8 



THE BOLSHEVIK MIDDLEMAN 9 

" Sire," replied the Minister of Indeterminate Equations, 
" the problems of honey production and distribution are 
exceedingly complicated. A brief glance through the6e 350 
pages will show you that as a result of the home garden 
campaign, one and seven-tenths per cent, of our garden 
area has been diverted from flower culture to pumpkins 
and millet. At the same time this thin-paper volume of 
1,265 pages from the Imperial Weather Bureau will show 
that the average amount of daily sunlight in the course of 
the last six months has declined by ninety-one hundredths 
of one per cent. The effect on the bee industry of a de- 
clining sun ratio and a restricted flower supply is obvious. 
It is the war, Majesty." 

" Now by the beard of the Conductor of the Bagdad 
Symphony," cried the Caliph, " will you tell me, Abu Ram- 
shyd, why the outbreak of hostilities should affect the aver- 
age daily precipitation of sunlight? " 

" Majesty," said the Minister of Indeterminate Equa- 
tions, " on that point our data are not complete. The rea- 
son may be that the regular clerk of the Weather Bureau 
has been drafted and his substitute is a young man who 
does not always add up his figures correctly. The fact 
remains that it costs one and a half maravedis more than 
a year ago to produce a pound of honey. This leaves us 
only an increase of thirty-seven and one-half maravedis to 
account for; which is easily explained by increased over- 
head." 

" Overhead or underhand, I wonder which," mumbled 
the Caliph, whose occasional lapses into a low form of 
humor the reader will soon be accustomed to. And then, 



io SINBAD 

seriously: " What remedy, then, do you suggest, Abu Ram- 
shyd? Shall we get after the rascally middlemen in the 
bazaars? " 

" Indubitable One," said the Minister of Indeterminate 
Equations, " it is unscientific and out of consonance with 
the modern spirit to assail individuals. I suggest an in- 
creased appropriation for twelve additional clerks and the 
purchase of a self-silencing dictograph. In that way we 
shall get at the truth before many months." 

But when the Minister of Indeterminate Equations had 
departed, the faithful Mesrour prostrated himself before 
the royal couch and said, after his characteristic untutored 
fashion: "Sire, I know nothing about ichthyology, but 
the traders in the bazaar are gouging the poor. Your an- 
cestors would have known how to go about it." 

The Caliph pondered. 

" As a modern ruler," he murmured, " I ought to prefer 
the dictograph and the Weather Bureau. As a descendant 
of the Prophet — Come, Mesrour, let us see for ourselves." 

But when they had turned into the bazaar, they stood 
still at the sight of a ragged graybeard who sat half asleep 
in a corner with an ancient horn lantern by his side. 

" Well met, old Diogenes," cried the Caliph. " We are 
now much in the same line of business. What say you? 
Shall we find an honest retail distributor by dint of search- 
ing? » 

Diogenes glanced up feebly. 

" There may be one or two, oh Stranger," he said. " But 
the price of illuminating oil has gone up 900 per cent., 
cotton wicks are 50 maravedis apiece, and I simply cannot 



THE BOLSHEVIK MIDDLEMAN n 

afford to keep my lantern going. You are welcome to it." 

They declined his offer with thanks and made their way 
into a retailer's booth, where Mesrour painfully sorted 
out the sum of forty-six maravedis from his wages, placed 
them on the counter and asked for a pound of honey, Nineveh 
middling. 

" The price is now fifty-one maravedis," said the trader. 
" Because of the earthquake in Malabar." 

Mesrour hardly needed the wink from the Caliph. He 
leaped forward and the trader was lying face down on his 
own counter. 

" As a progressive monarch," said the Caliph, " I bow 
my head to the inexorable sway of economic law. As an 
inheritor of the old Arabian blood, I shall now request the 
good Mesrour to unroll his camel's-hide whip and bestow 
forty lashes where it will do most good. Allah be with 
you, my son." 

" Merciful One," cried the unhappy trader, recognizing 
his visitor, " bid your companion to let me go, and I shall 
look through my books again. I feel convinced that a more 
careful examination will reveal that my overhead is not 
as large as I supposed it to be." 

" Very well," said the Caliph, " and remember, it's two 
lashes off for every per cent, down in your overhead." 

At the meat stall before which they next halted, prices 
were 10 per cent, up over yesterday. 

" Why? " demanded the Caliph. 

" Stranger," said the slaughterer, smoothing his eyebrows 
in the reflection of his brass scales, " the cost of electric 
light has gone up 50 per cent., service 135 per cent., boards 



12 SINBAD 

for shelving 456 per cent., meat hooks 875 per cent., and 
wrapping paper 2,000 per cent. I have spoken." 

" Take him, Mesrour," said the Caliph, and once more 
a badly frightened tradesman pledged himself to a revision 
of the law of supply and demand. The Caliph's temper 
was sadly frayed. 

" Remember," he said, pausing in the doorway, " if I 
find you at your old tricks, I'll have you nanged on the 
lowest gallows in Bagdad." 

" The tallest, you mean, Majesty," cried the tradesman, 
who in the midst of his fright kept his head for exact fig- 
ures. 

" The lowest," replied the Caliph, grimly. " Hemp hav- 
ing gone up 543 per cent., I have little rope to waste on 
scurvy rascals like you." 

But, as they walked home, a sore doubt beset him. 

" I have backslidden, Mesrour, I have relapsed. As a 
modern ruler I should have waited till the Minister of In- 
determinate Equations had investigated these fellows, in 
1926, and the courts had punished them, in 1937. I am 
but imperfectly civilized. Allah pity me." 



STORY OF THE CALIPH'S TROUBLES 

THE monarch was in Cabinet session when I sent m 
my card marked " Urgent." Within five minutes 
I was ordered to enter the presence. As I crawled into the 
royal chamber, several members of the Cabinet came crawl- 
ing out, and I collided with the Minister of Internal Rev- 
enue. 

" You will pardon the delay, Sinbad," said the Caliph, 
" but we were cleaning up the final details of the Princess 
Ayesha's wedding, and you know the Grand Vizier. He 
was under the impression that we were discussing the eccle- 
siastical budget, and every little while he had to be re- 
minded." 

" It is precisely on that business that I have come, your 
Majesty," I said. " I have received orders from my man- 
aging editor to send a thousand words by day cable on the 
marriage of the Princess Ayesha (may Allah bless her 
posterity) to the young Khan of Turkestan, fifty words 
on the political significance of the alliance and nine hun- 
dred and fifty words about the trousseau." 

" It is long and expensive," said the Caliph, and sighed. 

I emitted a discreet cluck of sympathy. 

" Sore indeed must be the affliction, oh Enlightened One," 
I said, " thus to part with a beloved daughter whose beauty, 
I have it on the best authority, is like the full moon over 

13 



i 4 SINBAD 

the palm trees, and whose disposition, I have been in- 
formed, is even like the gazelles of Khorassan." 

" True, Sinbad," he said. " And yet, know you, it is a 
relief, too." 

I gurgled something non-committal. 

" You have never had the giving of a modern daughter 
in marriage, have you, Sinbad? " 

" That felicity has been denied me, Majesty," I said. 

" When I first broached the subject to her," said the 
Caliph, " I naturally felt it my duty to devote a few well- 
chosen words to its solemn implications. But she inter- 
rupted me. ' Papa,' she said, ' you know as well as I do 
that marriage is a legalized device for the perpetuation of 
the race, so why pretend? ' Know you how old is the 
Princess Ayesha? " 

" Not more than eighteen," I said. " How else could 
it be? " 

He sighed again. 

" She told me, however, that she rather liked the young 
Khan of Turkestan and thought he would make a good 
husband." 

" But surely the two could have never met," I said, mind- 
ful of the old Moslem etiquette on the mingling of the 
sexes. 

" She saw him in the Bazaar when he made his official 
entry," he said. 

" The Princess Ayesha in the Bazaar," I cried, more and 
more astonished. 

" Disguised, of course, as a peddler of sunflower seed," 
be said; " the disguise she regularly assumes when engaged 



THE CALIPH'S TROUBLES 15 

in her scientific diet campaigns among the poor. But when 
I expressed my satisfaction, and ventured a few necessary 
commonplaces on the rights and obligations of wedlock, 
she said: 'Above all things, no cheap sentiment, Papa. 
There's just one basic principle to marriage, and I intend 
to live up to it: No annexations and no indemnities.' 
There was no use in arguing. Three days from now she 
will be on her way to Turkestan." 

I waited diplomatically. 

" As I said," resumed the Caliph, " it's a relief. You 
can hardly imagine what a nervous strain these modern 
young people are to us of an older generation. It's so hard 
to find out just where they stand. The Princess Ayesha 
will come in from one of her diet-kitchen trips and remind 
me how the children of the poor swarm in the back streets 
of Bagdad. The little boys, she tells me, are all growing 
up to be gangsters and the little girls — it keeps me awake 
nights, Sinbad." 

" Strange," I said, " that one so young should take no joy 
in life." 

" Who doesn't? " he demanded sharply. 

" The Princess Ayesha," I replied. 

" Don't be a fool, Smbad," he said. " The Princess 
Ayesha is the best-dressed woman in the palace. She 
dances like a professional, plays four string instruments, 
the tuba, and the kettledrums, and swims the fifty yards 
in the seraglio tank in forty-one seconds. She has been 
after me to lay out a golf links at my summer residence 
close to the ruins of Nineveh, where there are all kinds of 
natural hazards, she says. But I haven't dared. Mon- 



1 6 SINBAD 

archy isn't such a safe business nowadays at best. It's un- 
fair." 

" What is unfair, Desirable One? " I said. 

" This habit the young have of harrowing our middle- 
aged nerves," said the Caliph. " Their own nerves can 
stand it very well, don't you see. Ayesha will tell me that 
the ravages of tuberculosis in the poor districts of Bagdad 
are something dreadful. It is not to be denied. And I say 
to myself, ' Allah help me, what is to be done, what is to 
be done? Is it my duty perhaps to abdicate? ' Then I 
look up and find Ayesha eating marshmallows. I was thor- 
oughly unhappy for three days after Ayesha told me about 
the little boys who were growing up to be criminals and 
the little girls, but she went off to a dance at my brother's 
house." 

He tapped the heel of his slipper with the edge of his 
scimitar and looked thoughtfully out of the window. 

" The trousseau, Anointed One," I ventured to remind 
him. 

" Except that it comes from Paris and is very costly, I 
can tell you little, Sinbad," he said. " We were just dis- 
cussing it at the Cabinet meeting. I showed the Minister 
of High and Low Finance the list Ayesha had made out, 
and he said it would necessitate a two per cent, tax on fig 
exports in addition to the abandonment of the Bureau of 
Polar Exploration. I had talked it all over with Ayesha. 
I had suggested that on the occasion of her wedding there 
should be a distribution of bread and oil-cake to the popu- 
lace. * That's right/ she laughed, ' a handful of charity 



THE CALIPH'S TROUBLES 17 

now and then to keep them quiet.' I was very angry. 
' Ayesha,' I said, ' I am the father of my people.' She 
said, ' Papa, you know you are only one of the exploiting 
classes, and the biggest of the lot. A dozen morning robes 
is not enough,' and she crossed out 12 and wrote in 36. 
Sometimes I am tempted to believe that Ayesha is frivo- 
lous." 

" Compassion for my temerity," I cried, " but it is not 
so. My head upon it that the Princess is sincere." 

" And the thirty-six morning robes? " he asked. 

" Quite so, Beneficence," I said. " The Princess Aye- 
sha is even like that Paris which has furnished her royal 
wedding gear. You know the nation of the French, Maj- 
esty? " 

" Very little," he said, " except that it is a valorous peo- 
ple, considering it be an infidel nation, and that the lan- 
guage is curious. I have looked into the Princess Ayesha's 
exercise books. Instead of saying, ' What is that? ' they 
say, ' What is this which it is which that? ' or in their own 
language, ' Kesskessesskessah? ' Instead of saying, ' My 
brother's pink woolen dressing-gown,' they say, ' The robe 
of the chamber of wool of pink of my brother.' " 

" Majesty, the French are in the habit of saying worse 
things than that," I told him. " But they have also said 
much better things. They have given to the world its 
frivolous literature and its battle-slogans. They are the 
nation of the yellow-backed novel in paper at 3 francs 75 
centimes and cheap at one-fifth the price, and they are the 
nation of Valmy and Verdun. Simultaneously they have 



18 SINBAD 

given to civilization its millinery and its Marne. The se- 
cret, of course, is eternal youth. Even so with the Princess 
Ayesha." 

" You congratulate, then, the young Khan of Turke- 
stan? " he asked thoughtfully. 

" His will not be a dull life," I said. 



STORY OF THE SUPPRESSED DESIRE AND THE 
INFLATED CIRCULATION 

ANXIOUS to communicate the contents of my tele- 
gram to his Majesty without loss of time, I injected 
myself into the royal presence with unusual precipitancy. 
I was at the end of my fourth prostration and about a foot 
and a half, roughly, from 'the Sacred Divan when I became 
aware that the Commander of the Faithful was not alone. 
On a cretonne cushion at his feet knelt the Minister-Gen- 
eral of Posts and Pillar Boxes, and the two were evidently 
in earnest consultation. 

To put on brakes and apply the reverse crawl, or, as it is 
known popularly, the Diplomatic Glide, was but the work 
of a moment. I was already half-way through the brocade 
curtains when his Majesty deigned to take notice of my 
unworthy presence, and beckoned to me to return. 

" You may be the man we want, Sinbad," he said. " The 
Minister of Posts and Pillar Boxes has been showing me a 
copy of the Bagdad Monthly Mess, the latest publication 
to be excluded from the mails by his personal order. He 
has just called my attention to a peculiarly obnoxious car- 
toon, as he considers it. What do you think, Sinbad? " 

It is not always easy to read his Majesty's thoughts 
from his intonation or the glint in his eye. So I glanced 
hurriedly at the cartoon and said: 

»9 



20 SINBAD 

" Impenetrable One, it is a question of how you look 
at it." 

" Naturally, you look at it right side up," the Caliph 
snapped, and there was no longer any doubt as to what the 
proper answer might be. 

" Sire," I said, " the technique of the picture is marvel- 
ous. The man is a master of lire and shade." 

" It is more than that, it is awfully clever," declared his 
Majesty. " The whole paper is amusing. Vulgar, to be 
sure, but refreshing. I like the title. I like the motto: 
'Tabasco for Grandmother! ' I like the Board of Editors. 
There are seventeen responsible editors and thirty-six ad- 
visory editors, and all of them serious. Now, would you 
exclude a publication like that from the mails? " 

" Sooner would I cut off my right hand, Infallible One," 
I declared, with a fervor of conviction which surprised me 
as much as any one in the royal chamber. 

The Minister-General of Posts and Pillar Boxes smiled 
sardonically. 

" Sinbad is hardly an unprejudiced witness, August Suc- 
cessor," he said. " He is something of a journalist him- 
self, though harmless. The point is that this clever sheet, 
which no doubt it is, though I never read it, speaks of your 
Majesty as a weakling, and calls the war against Mada- 
gascar a crime. It is a public menace." 

The Caliph was quick to take him up. 

" But if you never read the paper, Burru-el-Hassan, how 
do you know? " 

" It is perfectly simple, Uncontradictable One. I my- 
self have no leisure, of course, for that sort of thing, my 



THE SUPPRESSED DESIRE 21 

time being entirely taken up with the elimination of waste 
in the Division of Canceled Postage Stamps. But I have 
implicit faith in the Chief of the Bureau of Suspicion and 
Heresy. He is a man with pronounced symptoms of dys- 
pepsia, and he can tell sedition by a mere glance at the 
wrapper." 

" How influential a paper is this Monthly Mess? " said 
the Caliph. 

" It started with a circulation of 875, your Majesty," 
replied the Minister-General of Posts and Pillar Boxes. 
" We have been suppressing it for two consecutive months, 
and its circulation is now 15,000. This shows that there is 
no time to be lost." 

The Caliph reached behind the silken cushions at the 
back of the divan and drew forth a newspaper with one 
hand while he shaded his eyes with the other. It was 
printed in seven colors, and the name of the publication 
was three-fourths of the way down the page. 

" I have been looking into this paper from time to time, 
Burru-el-Hassan," he said, " and I have come across a 
good many things which would displease me exceedingly 
if I had the necessary symptoms of indigestion. Why not 
suppress it, too? " 

The Minister of Posts and Pillar Boxes went deadly 
pale. 

" Impossible, Sire," he stammered. " Two million peo- 
ple read it every day." 

" So that you fail to regard it as a public menace? " 

The Minister held up his arms in entreaty. 

" Majesty, you will not take away from two million peo- 



22 SINBAD 

pie the daily Adventures of Dhingbat, of Kerisi Kat, and 
of Abu Kaab' Eblis, and the column of Unction for the 
Heartbroken? Consider the consequences. It's revolu- 
tion. And besides, deign to glance through the pages. 
Everywhere you see charming little pictures of the banner 
of the Prophet and heartening little mottoes like ' Meso- 
potamia First ' and ' All for Mesopotamia.' Think again, 
oh Considerate One." 

" The banners and the mottoes are delightful," said the 
Caliph, " and the exhortations of loyalty addressed to the 
public are no less pleasing. Give ear, Sinbad: ' Meso- 
potamia will hold no price too high for victory in the life- 
and-death struggle we are now waging in conjunction with 
cowardly Britain and the deluded French against the un- 
conquerable hosts of Madagascar.' Or this, Sinbad: 'Two 
billion sequins for wooden ships is not enough. We must 
be prepared to spend at least five billions on wooden bot- 
toms that will last the Madagascar submarines just about 
a month if indeed they do not turn turtle before leaving 
port.' Or this: ' Without fear or hesitation, with clenched 
teeth and resolute heart, we must plunge forward into the 
bottomless abyss.' It's a fine, loyal sheet, Sinbad. When 
you have read this newspaper carefully, you will understand 
why it is necessary to exclude that other thing, the Monthly 
Mess, from the mails." 

The Minister of Posts and Pillar Boxes heaved a great 
sigh of relief, and his countenance was like the sun when 
it sets behind the Euphrates desert. 

" I am happy to have convinced your Majesty," he said. 
" As for this essentially harmless organ of public opinion, 



THE SUPPRESSED DESIRE 23 

I fail to understand how the Chief Private Scribe of the 
Antechamber permitted a copy to reach your august hands 
without deleting the few infelicities that will creep into the 
best-regulated newspaper." 

The Caliph shook his head. 

" I don't get it from the Chief Scribe," he said. " He 
supplies me only with clippings from the dignified news- 
papers of Mesopotamia. I find them difficult reading in 
the subdued light of this chamber. The Chief Scribe re- 
tains this particular publication for his own use when he 
goes out for his midday meal. But I have a private ar- 
rangement with his office boy." 

He thought a moment and sighed. 

" I suppose I must let you have your way, Burru-el- 
Hassan," he said. " But in the name of Allah, I implore 
you to suppress the Monthly Mess utterly before it at- 
tains a circulation of a million and adds a department for 
the Heartbroken." 

But at this instant a stranger projected himself into the 
Presence and cried aloud: "Justice, Sire. Mercy, oh, 
Compassionate! " 

" What is your need, son? " said the Caliph. 

" Kindly One," uttered the stranger, " I am the editor 
of the Bagdad Hysterical Quarterly. I began a year ago 
with a circulation of 250 and a policy of consistent dis- 
loyalty. But I have escaped the attention of the Minister 
of Posts and Pillar Boxes, and to-day my circulation is 
234. Merciful One, suppress me! " 

" To what good? " asked the Caliph. 

" My subscriptions are paid up in advance," cried the 



24 SINBAD 

suppliant. " If I can save white paper and composition 
on only two numbers, I may come out even. And I need a 
vacation." 

He sobbed violently. 

" Have your wish, son," said the Caliph. " See to it, 
Burru-el-Hassan." 



STORY OF THE TRUE BELIEVERS 

ABOUT this time there came to Bagdad the whirling 
dervish Bhilee-el-Sunnadieh, to save the people from 
destruction. It was his solemn belief that more than the 
inhabitants of any other city in Mesopotamia the people of 
Bagdad are given over to worldly wisdom. He called them 
sophisticated, fat of heart, smug with content, and in every 
other way the servitors of the Spirit that denies, which is 
Sheitan. 

The dervish Sunnadieh never wearied of making this 
point. He did it on his feet, on his hands, on the flying 
trapeze, in the standing broad jump, and with the half-nel- 
son. Whether he addressed you from the top of the reading- 
desk or from between the legs of the grand piano the bur- 
den of his complaint was always the same: The people 
of Bagdad will not believe and are bound straight for hell, 
where they belong. 

Naturally I determined to canvass public opinion on the 
subject. With that end in view I first approached my good 
friend Hussein the Sanitary Barber, whom I found in the 
open space behind his booth digging up the soil for pota- 
toes. Him I addressed, saying, " Oh, Hussein, son of Ali, 
I entreat thee, refrain from your labors in behalf of the na- 
tion's food supply long enough to bestow upon me a shave 

25 



26 SINBAD 

and facial massage." And as I reclined in the chair watch- 
ing the play of his razor on the strop I said, " Is it true, oh 
Hussein, that the people of this city are set in their opinions 
and convinced that they know it all? " 

For some time he studied the tip of his nose in the mirror 
after the fashion of his kind. Then he laughed. 

" Sinbad," he said, " some child of Eblis has been pulling 
thy leg. In the words of our immortal mufti, Abu Mutal- 
lib, there is nothing to it. The people of Bagdad will 
believe anything." 

Having paused to reflect, he resumed his discourse at 
break-neck speed, yea, like the wild ass of Irak scenting 
the cool of the date trees at nightfall. 

" They believe what they read ; they believe what they 
hear, even to the third and the fourth remove. They 
believe Wullahim-ah-Hoirst. They believe the Fakirs of 
the Street of the Golden Wall where they go to exchange 
their good sequins and jewels for Insulated Copper pre- 
ferred. They believe the rescripts and decrees of the 
Aintar-Buru." 

" And who would the last-named be? " I asked. 

He explained that the Aintar-Buru is a guild which 
owns and controls the business of camel transport within 
Bagdad, and upon which the inhabitants entirely depend 
for conveyance to and from their work in the bazaars. By 
dint of much thought and labor the Aintar-Buru has suc- 
ceeded in increasing the average camel load from four 
passengers to twenty-six, leaving room enough on the flanks 
of the patient beasts — that is, the camels — for the posting 
of proclamations in large type, saying, " Our hearts go out 



THE TRUE BELIEVERS 27 

to our passengers. Write to us and you shall be com- 
forted, in the name of Allah! " And the people of Bag- 
dad believe this. And when the camel trains break down 
utterly, and the loading bridges are crowded to suffocation, 
and the ticket-selling slaves of the Aintar-Buru, seated in 
their kiosks, say to the populace, " Come ye in, come ye 
in, there is plenty of room," the people believe them, 
too. 

Much more Hussein told me concerning the child-like 
faith of the Bagdadanese. They believe in the efficacy 
of the laws. When a law is enacted by the Council pro- 
hibiting the carrying of deadly weapons by the common 
people they believe that the homicide rate the following 
morning has been reduced by nine-tenths; and when the 
law is declared to have failed they believe it just as easily. 
So great is their belief in the laws that, once a law is pro- 
claimed, they do not think it necessary to enforce it. And 
especially do they believe that for any betterment in their 
health, or their government, or their social conditions, all 
that is required is to set apart a Day for the purpose. Thus 
Hussein mentioned: 

Open-Window Day. 

Love-Your-Mother Day. 

Salute-the-Flag Day. 

Babies' Day. 

Eat-an-Apple Day. 

Get-Acquainted-With-Your-Neighbor Day. 

Visit-the-Aquarium Day, etc. 

Hussein pointed out that while nobody has ever been 
observed to perform any of these appointed ceremonials 



28 SINBAD 

on the appointed day, everybody believes that everybody 
else is doing it. 

I was ruminating on the many strange things which the 
Sanitary Barber had told me when all at once he seized 
a crystal bowl of liquid perfume and made as if he would 
deluge my head and face with it after the manner of his 
tribe. He received my protest with ill-grace, as is custo- 
mary, whereupon, to appease him, I said, " Tell me this, 
oh Hussein, do the people of Bagdad find it difficult to 
believe so many things at the same time? " 

His face brightened, like the sheen of the palm leaf 
under the new moon. 

" Quite the contrary, Sinbad," he said. " The advantage 
of having numerous and contradictory things to believe in 
is that everybody can pick out the particular thing to 
which he may pin his faith. Take, for instance, the ques- 
tion of How to Succeed, in which the people of Bagdad 
are more interested than in anything else. For that pur- 
pose they read the inspirational Magh-Azins." 

" I do not know them," I said. 

He explained that a Magh-Azin is a publication issued 
every new moon and containing chapters on how to suc- 
ceed in life by eminent men who have succeeded. If you 
read these chapters one after the other you find that the 
secret of success is (i) to go to college, (2) to start in as 
a foundry apprentice, (3) to determine beforehand what 
you want to do, (4) to look about and experiment before 
settling down, (5) to go East to Baluchistan and grow 
up with the country, (6) to stay in Bagdad, where the 



THE TRUE BELIEVERS 29 

opportunities are richest, (7) not to marry until one has 
a competence, (8) to find the right woman who will share 
your ambitions and struggles with you, (9) to study Span- 
ish and French, (10) to go in for Occasional Training. 

The latter was a term which I did not comprehend. But 
of that later. 



STORY OF FATIMA AND THE BOND- 
SALESMAN 

THE authenticity of the following narrative I can per- 
sonally vouch for. It was imparted to me under the 
seal of strictest confidence by the Grand Vizier, by the head 
scribe of the Bureau of Polar Exploration, by the Keeper 
of the Tennis Courts, by the chief mufti of the Executive 
Committee of the National Mesopotamian Association for; 
the Capture and Consolidation of Equal Rights for Women 
(familiarly known as the E. C. N. M. A. C. C. E. R. W.), 
and by the head barber at the caravanserai where I lodge. ' 

It would appear then that on a certain day the Com- 
mander of the Faithful, musing on the probable outcome 
of the Two Billion Defense Loan, sent for Ali ben Hassan, 
his chief cosmetician and professor of modern languages, 
and caused himself to be disguised as an itinerant mer- 
chant's clerk, even to the curl of the beard and the slant 
of the eyebrows. Inserting a handful of cigars into the 
folds of his turban and carrying a wallet with several bonds 
of the denomination of ioo sequins and upwards, the Caliph 
departed from Bagdad and betook himself to the village 
of Hammidieh, in the outskirts whereof he accosted the 
husbandman, Yussuf ben Omar, plowing behind a team 
of oxen. 

" Peace to you and yours, oh Yussuf," said the Caliph. 
" We are obviously in for a spell of warm weather. Attempt 

30 



FATIMA AND THE BOND-SALESMAN 31 

one of these cigars, I entreat you, and put the rest in your 
girdle. I have here a proposition — " 

" I have met you before," said Yussuf. 

" It may be," said the Caliph. 

" Four years ago," said Yussuf, " you sold me fourteen 
cubits of Moslem Masterpieces in limp leather for a small 
payment down." 

" True, oh Yussuf," said the Caliph. 

" Three years ago," said Yussuf, " you sold my wife 
Fatima a combination rug sweeper and music box on the 
same terms." 

"Allah has strengthened your recollection," said the 
Caliph. 

" Last year," said Yussuf, " you sold me flood insur- 
ance." 

" For each day its special need," said the Caliph. " Now 
I hold in my hand — " 

" I know," said Yussuf. " It behooves me merely to 
sign my name at the foot of the paper and to make 7,000 
weekly payments thereafter." 

" More or less," said the Caliph, " dependent on the 
amount." 

Yussuf considered for a brief space. 

" You see the irrigation ditch that bounds my millet 
field," he said. 

" It is a noble ditch," said the Caliph. 

" It is three feet wide at the top," said Yussuf. " A 
man might easily take it on the jump, especially with a 
flying start." 

" Assuredly," said the Caliph. 



32 SINBAD 

" I grant you that flying start," said Yussuf. 

The Caliph's hand swept back to where his scimitar 
should have been, but he checked himself. 

" The scroll of the past is rolled tight and sealed, oh 
Yussuf," he said. " This is altogether a different affair." 

"Now, by the scalloped eaves of the Sacred Bungalow 
of Ararat," cried the farmer, " if you persist! " 

The other unrolled the engrossed and illuminated bond. 

" For Caliph and Country," he said solemnly. " The 
Successor of the Prophet is at war with Madagascar. The 
men he has; but how, oh Yussuf, shall they be armed and 
fed? This parchment is worth ioo sequins. I offer it to 
you for that amount." 

Yussuf stared. 

" Never before this have you offered me for the sum of 
ioo sequins anything worth less than five times that 
amount," he said. " Mayhap you have been listening to 
the whirling dervish Sunnadieh and got religion." 

The Caliph pushed his advantage. 

" Your country calls, Yussuf ben Omar," he said. " In 
this war against Madagascar some make offer of their lives ; 
the others must give of their means. It is a national 
service." 

" Have I not done enough? " said Yussuf. " The tax- 
gatherer is ever at my elbow. Fertilizer has gone up 200 
per cent. Asses and mules have gone up 60 per cent. Hired 
men are not to be had. What more does the country 
want? " 

" But as a business proposition, Yussuf," said the Caliph. 
"A gilt-edged investment; 3 J/2 per cent, for thirty years 



FATIMA AND THE BOND-SALESMAN 33 

backed by the credit of Mesopotamia and tax-exempt; the 
greatest going concern in the two hemispheres; assets over 
100,000,000,000 sequins over liabilities, and only the sur- 
face of the property scratched." 

The farmer rubbed his chin. 

" You say there is no risk? " 

" I swear it by both shores of the Euphrates," said the 
Caliph. 

" Bah," said Yussuf. " Then what kind of national serv- 
ice do you call this? While other men are taking the peril 
of life and limb, you would have me serve my Caliph by 
drawing ^A P er cent « on a gilt-edged security. It is a 
safe patriotism." 

Here the Caliph lost his temper. 

" Now Eblis take me, but it is not so safe as that! Hold 
tight your purse-strings, old curmudgeon, and you'll have 
the hordes of Madagascar sweeping over your millet fields 
before the year is over and burning the roof over your head. 
It is a toss-up as it is." 

" Oh," said Yussuf, " then it is taking a chance? " 

" Unquestionably." 

"Like the Moslem Masterpieces and the carpet 
sweeper? " 

" More or less." 

"In that case — " said Yussuf, but at this moment his 
wife, Fatima, came walking across the fields towards her 
husband. Seeing the stranger, she dropped the veil over her 
face. 

"Lift your veil, Fatima; it is only an agent," said 
Yussuf, 



34 SINBAD 

She came up to them. 

" Father of my children," she said, " what would the 
young man? " 

" He would sell us a ioo-sequin Defense Bond," said 
Yussuf. 

The Caliph intervened. 

" I was telling your husband, oh woman among ten 
thousand, that in the present emergency it is simple duty 
to give of your means to the Government, seeing that others 
stand ready to give their lives — " 

Fatima's eyes grew dim and she turned away. Yus- 
suf's hand came down heavy on the Caliph's shoulder. 

" Incomparable Idiot," he whispered, " our eldest son, 
Malek, has enlisted with the spearmen; Selim, our second, 
has joined the Sub-Surface Camel Squadron, and now the 
youngest is clamoring to go." 

" Allah take pity on my ill-adjusted faculties," said the 
Caliph. " How was a man to know? " He bent to the 
ground and retreated. 

"Stay," said Fatima, and then to her husband: "The 
hens, oh Glory of my Household, are laying well. The 
brown calf is almost ready for the slaughterer. There is 
a bit of money coming in from the wool-merchant. Let 
us take this one with the green and purple lettering." 

" Can we afford it, Fatima? " said Yussuf. 

" I have just been reading up a new way of utilizing 
pomegranate seeds in a bulletin of the Mesopotamian Moth- 
ers' Association," said Fatima. " We will manage, Chief 
Jewel of my Diadem." 



FATIMA AND THE BOND-SALESMAN 35 

" One hundred sequins? " said Yussuf. 

" Five hundred," said Fatima, and the Crown of her 
Existence, breathing hard, signed. 

" Admirable Mother," said the Caliph. " Your country 
thanks you." 

" It will look lovely in a gold frame in the parlor," said 
Fatima. 



STORY OF THE ENTANGLED LEGISLATOR 

THE Commander of the Faithful, accompanied by 
his sword-bearer, Mesrour, and by the Principal 
Censor, was making his nightly round among the home 
gardens in the environs of the capital. There suddenly fell 
upon the royal ears the sound of a man's lamentations min- 
gled with gentle words of comfort from a woman's lips. 
By the light of Mesrour 's lantern they saw that the accents 
of grief emanated from an individual of middle age, who 
leaned his head against the wall of a porch with eyes 
half-closed, pausing occasionally to glance at an engrossed 
parchment in his right hand, the perusal of which only 
seemed to intensify his sorrow. By his side sat a woman, 
his wife, and fondled his right hand and wiped the perspira- 
tion from his forehead with the folds of her long veil. 

" By the beard of the Collector of Internal Revenue for 
the Third District," cried the Caliph, " but this is a woeful 
sight," and with characteristic impulsiveness he snatched 
from the hand of the Principal Censor the thermos bottle 
which was the sign of his office (so that as occasion re- 
quired the Principal Censor might blow hot or cold) and 
held it to the sufferer's lips. And when the latter had 
drunk, " Tell me, oh stranger," said the Caliph, " the cause 
of your unmitigated nocturnal woe." 

The stranger handed the parchment to the Caliph, 
" Read," he said, and relapsed with his brow against the 

3 6 



THE ENTANGLED LEGISLATOR 37 

porch steps. Bidding Mesrour hold his lantern aloft, the 
Caliph read aloud: 

" An Act for the Regulation and Conservation of the 
National Food Supply: 

" Section 1. The sum of 2,500,000 sequins is hereby 
appropriated for the erection of a marble post office in the 
Fourteenth Electoral District of Bagdad. 

"Section 2. All appropriations for the deepening of the 
Tigris channel below the port of Basra as herein provided 
shall be expended only under the supervision of the Im- 
perial Engineering Department. 

" Section 3. The Act of 1897 relating to pensions for the 
war of 1456 is hereby amended by the omission of the 
word ' not ' wherever it occurs. 

" Section 4. Full freedom of worship is hereby reaffirmed 
for all natives of Mesopotamia. 

" Section 5. All gold coins of the denomination of 100 
sequins and upward shall hereafter be issued only from 
the Central Mint at Bagdad. 

" Section 6. A minimum length of two and a half cubits 
for all bed-linen and blankets in public inns in towns of 
more than 30,000 population is hereby established. 

" Section 7. Compulsory Arabic and Hindu shall hence- 
forth be required for all entrance examinations to the Gov- 
ernment colleges." 

The Caliph looked up in wonder. 

" But what has all this to do with an act for the regu- 
lation and conservation of the national food supply? " he 
said. ^Whereat the stranger raised his head, said, "Ah," 
and burst into uncontrollable tears. 



3 8 SINBAD 

Thereupon the woman, his wife, putting her arm fondly 
about her husband's shoulder and addressing herself to .the 
Caliph, lifted up her voice and said: " Know ye, strangers, 
that this my husband was chosen a short year ago to the 
National Council of Elders from the Ninth Euphrates Dis- 
trict, and that he entered the legislative halls of the capital 
with the firm resolve to give all that is best in him to the 
business of framing the laws of his county. To that end 
he said farewell to his family save me, his wife, abandoned 
his outdoor pastimes, and purchased a set of the Encyclo- 
pedia Babylonica in one hundred and thirty-seven volumes 
on the instalment plan. Having prepared himself diligently 
for the task, he arose in the Legislative Hall a fortnight 
ago, while the Bill for the Regulation of Electric 
Franchises was under consideration, and started to ad- 
dress the House on the use of electric current in domestic 
industry." 

Furtively she brought the corner of her veil to her eyes, 
and the Caliph's hand went out to her in instinctive sym- 
pathy. 

" My dear madam," said the Caliph. 

" It is nothing," she replied. " My husband had hardly 
begun to dilate on the advantages of the patent electric iron 
in the home when the Chief Cadi of the House brought 
down his gavel with a crash and declared that the gentle- 
man from the Euphrates was not addressing himself to the 
subject in hand. 

" ' We are discussing the Bill for Electric Franchises,' 
said my husband. 

" ' True,' said the Chief Cadi, ' but we now have under 



THE ENTANGLED LEGISLATOR 39 

consideration Section 12, providing for a national census 
of oleomargarine factories.' 

" ' Will I be in order under the next section? ' asked my 
husband. 

" ' No,' said the Chief Cadi, ' that deals exclusively with 
hoof-and-mouth disease in Baluchistan.' 

" ' Section 37, then,' said my husband. 

" ' By consulting his printed copy of the bill,' said the 
Chief Cadi drily, ' the gentleman will discover that Sec- 
tion 37 relates to import duties on ostrich eggs, mediaeval 
sculpture, and taffeta.' 

" ' In that case,' cried my husband in desperation, ' when 
will the opportunity arise to discuss electric franchises? ' 

" ' I cannot say,' replied the Chief Cadi, ' unless it comes 
up under the Bill for the Regulation of the Local Ju- 
diciary.' 

" From that time," the woman went on, as she held the 
thermos bottle to her husband's lips, " his splendid dreams 
of service to his country faded. He did not give in readily. 
One flash of hope there came. My husband was pledged 
to his constituents to secure legislation for the erection of 
a Museum of Fine Arts in his district. He came home one 
night from the House all aglow. ' I have done it, Fatima,' 
he cried. ' You know the Forest Reserve Bill? Well, Sec- 
tion 8 in the original form provided, by pure accident, for 
the organization of a corps of 5,000 men for the purpose 
of fighting forest fires, and I have succeeded in having my 
Museum Bill substituted.' That night he could not sleep 
for happiness. Alas! Next day the House adopted an 
amendment to his amendment, providing for the equipment 



4 o SINBAD 

and dispatch of a scientific expedition to the North Pole." 

" And since then he has been like this? " asked the 
Caliph. 

She nodded miserably. 

" Now by the sacred turban of Ispahan," cried Mes- 
rour, " it were best, oh Majesty, to put this poor fool out 
of his misery once for all." The heavy scimitar flashed 
upward and the woman shrieked; but the unhappy legis- 
lator looked up and said wearily: "Not that it makes any 
difference to me, but by what authority would you take my 
life, efficient stranger? " 

" Section 13 of the Deep Sea Fisheries Act," said Mes- 
rour grimly. 

" Let be, Mesrour," said the Caliph; " the man has spent 
himself for his country." 



STORY OF THE BEWILDERED BRIDEGROOM 

NOW that the Princess Ayesha is happily wedded and 
on her way to Turkestan, there can be no harm in 
my betraying the secret that only by the narrowest kind 
of a squeak was catastrophe averted almost at the last 
moment. 

In the dusk of evening on the day before the nuptials 
I was passing through the court which separates the offices 
of the Principal Censor from the Bureau of Irrigation and 
Fine Arts when I discerned the figure of a man seated in an 
attitude of utter dejection on the fountain's edge. His 
chin was in the palm of his right hand, and with his foot 
he was demonstrating in the gravel of the courtyard the 
never-to-be-forgotten truth that the sum of two sides in any 
triangle is greater than the third side. 

Coming closer, I saw that it was the young Khan of 
Turkestan, husband-to-be of the Princess Ayesha. 

" Highness," I exclaimed, " you here and at this hour? " 

He looked at me with lack-luster eyes, and in a voice 
that went straight to the heart, " Is it you, Sinbad? " he 
said. " Well, it's all off, old man." 

" Now, by the beard of the General Manager of the 
Bagdad Oil Subsidiaries, you are jesting, Highness," I cried. 

He shook his head, and with the toe of his left sandal 
proved beyond cavil that in any circle the circumference 

41 



42 SINBAD 

is equal to the diameter multiplied by 3. 141 59. Then sud- 
denly, "Tell me this, Sinbad," he said; ''of how many 
minds may any woman at any given moment be, simul- 
taneously? " 

" Transparency," I said, " by the latest census figures 
there are in Mesopotamia 11,345,234 women between the 
ages of six and eighty-four. But to-morrow's nuptials — ? " 

Thereupon he told me. 

It would seem that only an hour before, the young 
Khan, with his bride, her royal father, and the Chief Mul- 
lah, were met to decide on the final details of the marriage 
contract and the wording of the oath. On his own initia- 
tive the Mullah had omitted " obey." All that we can ask 
of young people nowadays, he said, is that they shall love 
and cherish — 

" No," said the Princess Ayesha, " love and respect. I 
don't want to be cherished, and I won't condescend to 
cherish. We can very well take care of ourselves. Hassan 
and I are to be comrades and friends." 

" And I consented readily, Sinbad," said the young Khan, 
" for, looking at Ayesha, even beneath her veil, there was 
naught but her that mattered." 

" True," I said. " ' A book of verses underneath the 
bough, a crust of bread, and Thou beside me in the wilder- 
ness.' " 

" What's that from? " asked the Khan. 

" Omar Khayyam, your Highness, one of your eminent 
poets of Central Asia." 

" Never heard of him," he said. " But stay. I recall 
now some such verses chanted by a young woman from 



BEWILDERED BRIDEGROOM 43 

America who visited Turkestan a few years ago. She went 
about with a kodak and nearly drove the Superintendent 
of the Woman's Palace insane. I was saying: I agreed 
to Ayesha's stipulation, and then, moved by I know not 
what excess of tenderness, of which even now I am not 
ashamed, 'Write it down in the contract, oh Mullah,' I 
said, • that, contrary to the immemorial practice of the 
princely house of Turkestan, never, after Ayesha crosses 
the threshold of my palace as my wife, shall another woman 
enter to share or dispute with her the respect and — ' " 

" ' Please, please, no sentiment, Hassan dear,' laughed 
Ayesha. ' It is very nice of you, to be sure, but after all 
we know the male of the species is as yet imperfectly monog- 
amous, and writing it down in the contract would not make 
it otherwise.' 

" That hurt, Sinbad. The Caliph, her father, blushed, 
and the Chief Mullah had a bad fit of coughing. But I 
cared for Ayesha, and I wanted to do the right thing. 
' Very well,' I said, ' we will be practical. Write, oh Mul- 
lah, that whatsoever privileges I may hereafter arrogate to 
myself, these rights I concede to Ayesha. There shall be 
no double standards in Turkestan.' 

" ' Now you are insulting,' said Ayesha ; ' I won't stay 
here another minute.' 

" ' But by the Twenty-four Books of the Shah Nameh,' 
I cried, ' what have I done, Ayesha? ' Only she would not 
answer. 

" ' Son, beg her pardon,' whispered the Caliph behind his 
hand. 

" ' But—' 



44 SINBAD 

" The Chief Mullah bent over me. ' Beg her pardon, you 
idiot, or you're done for,' he hissed. 

" ' Ayesha,' I said, 'return; I beg your pardon.' 

" She came back and sat down at a little distance. ' The 
least I can expect is that you consider my feelings,' she 
said. ' Let us proceed.' " 

Well, when they came to Clause XII, Subdivision C, of 
the marriage contract, enumerating the bridegroom's gifts, 
the young Khan remarked on the famous royal emeralds 
of Turkestan. " They will* match Ayesha's eyes," said he. 

" How do you know the color of my eyes? " said Ayesha. 
" You have never seen me unveiled." 

" They all three stared at me, Sinbad, and I could not 
but confess the truth. ' I have not seen your living fea- 
tures, Ayesha,' I said. ' But your photograph — ' 

" ' Where? ' she asked. 

" ' In the New York Sunday Supplement,' I said. ' That 
American woman with the kodak. She told me that on 
her way to Turkestan she had visited Bagdad. It came 
to me all at once that she might have met Ayesha. I sent 
a special ambassador to search the files of the illustrated 
papers, and after two years they found the picture.' 

" Ayesha came close to me and said in a strange voice, 
' You did this for me, Hassan? ' But I remembered what 
she said about sentiment, and I made answer, ' Naturally I 
wished to know what the mother of my children would look 
like.' She stood straight up and said, ' Hassan, you might 
at least be a gentleman, even if you don't care a rap for 
me,' and walked out. Why was I ever born, Sinbad? " 



BEWILDERED BRIDEGROOM 45 

Now the chill of evening had descended upon the court- 
yard, and as I sat on the cold stone of the fountain-rim 
in my light Oriental robes and racked my brains for words 
of suitable comfort, I sneezed mightily and again and again; 
and just then the veiled figure of a woman passed across 
the courtyard. Ayesha stopped and looked back. 

" Who was that? You, Sinbad? " she said. 

I was inspired: " Not I, Serenity." 

She turned to Hassan. 

" How long have you had this cold? " 

I nudged him fiercely and he understood. 

" Since yesterday, Ayesha," he said humbly. 

" Go straight to your room and gargle with bicarbonate 
of soda," she commanded. 

" As you say, Ayesha," replied the young Khan and 
departed. The next day they were married. 



STORY OF THE UNPLEASANT TASK 

I WASTED no time in preliminaries. 
"Majesty," I said, " is there enthusiasm among the 
people of Mesopotamia for this war with the Empire of 
Madagascar? " 

The Caliph glanced anxiously at the curtains through 
which the Principal Censor had but now disappeared. 

" Never fear, Illustrious," I observed. " By this time he 
is busy with the naval reports, eliminating all references 
to the equator." 

" In that case, Sinbad," he said, " I am free to state 
that there is no overwhelming enthusiasm for the war. And 
between you and me, I am neither surprised nor disap- 
pointed." 

" 'Tis a pity," I said. 

" Not at all," he countered sharply. " Have you ever 
cleaned out the furnace or chastised one of the children 
with enthusiasm? " 

" Incomparable One," I cried, " surely that hand has 
never been laid upon the royal offspring, save in kind- 
ness! " 

He shook his head wearily. 

" You are shocked, Sinbad? Well, I have tried the other 
thing. I have been modern. I have resorted to moral 
persuasion. I have taken them singly or half a dozen at 
a time and reasoned with them. Not infrequently I have 

4 6 



THE UNPLEASANT TASK 47 

been moved to tears by my own eloquence. And when I 
departed, leaving them alone with their conscience, they 
fell to shooting marbles on the ebony table. So I have 
fallen back on the older methods of child culture. Twice 
a month I go through the list with the strap of my scimitar." 

" A comprehensive undertaking," I said, half to myself. 

" Not if you go at it in a businesslike way," he replied. 
" At first I made use of a modified form of the selective 
draft, disciplining them from the age of seven to ten on the 
first day of the week, from ten to twelve on the second, 
and so on up to the age of sixteen, when I turn them over 
to the Minister of Secondary Education. Subsequently I 
changed to the alphabetical arrangement, Abdul to Enver 
on Mondays, Fatima to Hussein on Tuesdays, etc. I go 
through the alphabet conscientiously every fortnight, but 
if you ask me with enthusiasm — no." 

" And you find it does the children good? " I said. 

" We were speaking of the war," he said. " We have 
gone into the struggle against Madagascar as into a neces- 
sary bit of sanitation. We will see it through, but why 
should we give way to enthusiasm? It has been a bitter 
business for those who went in before us; even so will it 
be for us — a costly and unavoidable duty. So be it. For 
that matter — " 

The Principal Censor plunged through the curtains and 
tripped over a footstool. 

" Sire," he cried, " there is a traitor in our midst. The 
enemy knows that one of our transports has sailed," 

The Caliph frowned. 



48 SINBAD 

" Have you guarded the secret well? " he demanded. 

" Implacably, oh Indispensable One/' cried the Principal 
Censor. " With the exception of 542 conductors and brake- 
men, 75 Pullman porters, 678 baggage smashers, 1,500-odd 
stevedores, 12,000 editors, and the people who commute 
from across the Tigris between six and nine in the morn- 
ing, say, 40,000 citizens at most, not a living soul has had 
even the suspicion of what the Minister of War was about." 

The Caliph stroked his beard thoughtfully. 

" Tell me this, oh Hajji Ali," he said, addressing him- 
self to the Principal Censor, " is there even one among my 
Ministers and servants concerning whose activities the ene- 
my is not well informed? " 

" Majesty," cried the Principal Censor, " there is I. Fre- 
quently I am myself at a loss as to just what I am about; 
how much less the enemy who — " 

" It is well," said the Caliph. " Go back to thy secrets, 
Hajji Ali." And when the latter was gone, " Sinbad," he 
said, " has it ever occurred to you that enthusiasm is usually 
fifty years or more after the event? " 

" Now that you mention it, Sire," I said. 

" I have been reading of late in the history of the peo- 
ple of the United States," said the Caliph. " And it would 
plainly appear that in their war of liberation against the 
Britons the armed forces of the United States were prin- 
cipally engaged in running away — so the learned historian 
tells me — while the civil population speculated in depre- 
ciated currency and jumped land titles. Is that true? " 

" Majesty," I said, " I have been brought up partly on 
Latin and Greek and partly on the Gary system, and I 



THE UNPLEASANT TASK 49 

know nothing of the history of the country in which I was 
born." 

" Later I read," he continued, " that in the great Civil 
War for the preservation of the United States there was 
much discontent, contractors' graft, sedition, and bounty- 
jumping. Yet the Britons were beaten in 1776 and the 
nation was preserved in 1861." 

" Far be it from me to question the dates," I said. 

" As a matter of fact," said the Caliph, " it would not 
be a difficult matter to stimulate enthusiasm if one went at 
it the right way. The question is what is the right way. 
We discussed it in Cabinet council, where two contrary 
opinions developed. The Grand Vizier and the Minister 
of Horticulture were in favor of scaring the people to 
death. The Ministers of War and Statistics insisted upon 
a policy of tickling the people to death. We effected a 
compromise — the Scarers to give out their special inter- 
views on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the 
Ticklers on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. We re- 
served Sunday for modifying and explaining all statements 
issued during the preceding six days." 

" An ingenious scheme," I said, cautiously steering my 
way, " yet — " 

" It didn't work at all," said the Caliph sadly. " The 
Scarers began by announcing that all our battleships had 
a heavy list to starboard and that there was a scarcity of 
ponchos for the infantry. Thereupon the Bagdad Buzzer 
demanded why we were going into war unprepared. Next 
day the Ticklers declared that the enemy was in the throes 
of defeat, and people wrote in to ask what was the use 



50 SINBAD 

of our coming in at the finish. So we dropped the whole 
scheme." 

" But, Magnificent One, will men fight without enthu- 
siasm? " I said. 

" I'd rather have them fight with determination," he re- 
plied. " You see, Sinbad, this isn't golf we are going in 
for, but a job; a trying, disagreeable, necessary job, like 
working for one's living. Besides " — the Caliph smiled into 
his beard — " you are a married man, Sinbad? " 

" I have the best wife in the world," I said. 

" Even so. And on occasion you have been dispatched 
after midnight to investigate suspicious noises in the cellar? " 

"It has occurred," I said. "Kismet! " 

" And you have crawled downstairs without enthusiasm 
because it was a nuisance? " 

" Quite so, Majesty." 

" Suppose, now, you did find the midnight intruder. You 
would not remain indifferent? " 

" Indifferent is scarcely the word," I said. 

" Conceivably you might develop an active resentment 
against the man who compelled you to get out of bed on 
a cold night, especially if there were chairs misplaced in 
the dark? " 

I bowed before his subtlety. 

" Incomparable One, you have said it." 



STORY OF THE CALIPH AND APAWAMIS 

SOMETHING is at work in his Majesty's mind which 
I should hesitate to put into words even if the Prin- 
cipal Censor allowed me to; so momentous are its impli- 
cations, not only for Mesopotamia and her allies, but for 
the future of all civilized government. 

From many sources I have recently heard that his Majesty 
is not giving his whole heart to the conduct of the war. 
He sits absorbed at the sessions of the War Cabinet and 
rouses himself with a start to vote automatically " yes " 
or " no." On several occasions he has expressed a fervent 
desire for peace almost on any terms, which is quite out 
of consonance with the spirit and ideals in which he em- 
barked on the great enterprise. On this point all the Cabi- 
net members are agreed, the Grand Vizier, the Minister of 
Fine Arts and Irrigation, the Minister of Unfermented 
Foods, the Minister of High and Low Finance, and the 
Under-Secretary for Classical Education. 

I asked the Grand Vizier when he first noticed the change 
in his Majesty's sentiments, and the Grand Vizier said 
about three weeks ago, or, to be precise, the day after the 
arrival of his Majesty's first set of golf sticks, ordered by 
wireless from London and conveyed to Basra from Suez 
by the fastest destroyer in the Mesopotamian navy and 

51 



52 SINBAD 

thence up the Tigris by hydroplane. The very next day 
an important meeting of the War Cabinet had been called 
to discuss (i) an embargo on figs and dates, and (2) the 
rapid fall in the value of the Madagascar mark, which 
latter the Minister of High and Low Finance described as 
an event of the utmost significance. But the Caliph ad- 
journed the meeting to the following day, " for reasons per- 
haps best known to'yourself, Sinbad," said the Grand Vizier, 
looking me straight in the eye. 

I made no attempt at evasion and concealment. That 
day I had escorted the Caliph to the links, which had been 
begun and completed within ten days by detailing to the 
task two brigades of the Royal Engineers and a division 
of the Home Defense League. There was a show of criti- 
cism in the Opposition press, but it was quickly suppressed 
by the Principal Censor, who learned the game at St. An- 
drew's. The Principal Censor himself was too busy that 
day to undertake his Majesty's first lesson, being then en- 
gaged in cutting out from the dispatches all references to 
the Atlantic Ocean, and it fell to me to act as the Caliph's 
mentor. 

" And, Sinbad," said the Principal Censor, " for the occa- 
sion I designate you as Special Deputy Censor with com- 
plete authority over everything you may chance to see and 
hear." 

" A censor on the golf links? " I said. 

" No precautions must be overlooked," said the P. C. 
" His Majesty, of course, will only be referring to the ball 
or to some tree that may chance to get into the way. But 
his remarks may be overheard, misinterpreted, and imme- 



THE CALIPH AND APAWAM1S 53 

diately transmitted to Madagascar, where they will be 
seized upon as proof that the war is going ill for Mesopo- 
tamia and that the royal temper is cracking under the 
strain." 

As a matter of fact, P. C. spoke like a fool. On the 
links, as well as off, his Majesty was always the gentleman 
and the monarch. As I teed up, he lifted a kindly finger 
and remarked: " Sinbad, remember now, no diplomacy! " 

" Royal Delight," I said, " diplomacy? I am a plain 
newspaper man, and I say only what comes first to my 
mind." 

" I mean that you are to put up your very best game, 
Sinbad," he said. " I won't stand for calculated indiscre- 
tions." 

I did my best to obey, but an unforeseen difficulty arose 
with the caddies. To them his Majesty on the golf links 
was still his Majesty, and the thought of his defeat at 
the hands of a foreign and infidel scribbler was not to be 
tolerated. Wherefore the caddies, both the Caliph's and 
mine, began to practise frightfulness. They manipulated 
the balls with an expert heel-and-toe motion, mine into the 
rough and the Caliph's out of the ditch. They dropped 
balls from their pockets, the Caliph's on the further side 
of the pond and mine backwards into the water. And they 
counted systematically, adding a stroke to the hole for Sin- 
bad and subtracting two from the Caliph's score. 

At the fifth hole the Caliph caught on, and a new brace 
of caddies was requisitioned. Automatically they fell into 
the same procedure, and for the first time I saw the glint 
of wrath in the royal eye. 



54 SINBAD 

I interceded for the boys. " It is a very comprehensible 
case of loyalty, Topmost One," I said. 

" Nevertheless, Sinbad," he said, " I insist upon a caddy 
who will act up to his duty and conscience, fearing neither 
Caliph nor Vizier, neither God nor man." 

I thought for a moment and said: " My journalistic ex- 
perience, oh Merciful, has been gained entirely in America, 
but if analogy counts, I should say that perhaps a couple 
of office boys from the Bagdad Buzzer would nearest an- 
swer the description." 

And so it turned out. But I have wandered from the 
original point which concerns the Caliph and the War Cabi- 
net. At that meeting, therefore, after the Caliph's first 
game, the monarch sat silent, sketching idly with a pencil 
upon the margin of a model Defense Loan bond, while the 
Minister of High and Low Finance spoke of the decline of 
the Madagascar mark. It was the Minister's opinion that 
if the mark continued to depreciate another ten per cent., 
it would mean disaster for Madagascar; yes, it would mean 
Revolution in the enemy's country — the Minister of Fi- 
nance was exultant. 

The Caliph looked up quickly. " Revolution? " he said. 
<: Where? " 

" In Madagascar, your Majesty," said the Minister of 
Finance. 

" Oh," said the Caliph, in obvious disappointment, and 
then as the eyes of the Cabinet turned curiously upon him, 
he blushed. The Grand Vizier showed me the sketch that 
the Caliph had been engaged upon while the Minister of 
Finance was speaking. It showed in rough outline an im- 



THE CALIPH AND APAWAMIS 55 

proved form of putter, leaded near the tip, and longer by 
an inch than the club his Majesty had employed yesterday 
with but indifferent success. 

" Now, what does all this mean, Sinbad? " said the Grand 
Vizier. " On no less than three occasions since then his 
Majesty has asked me whether there were any chance of 
a revolution here in Mesopotamia. I assured him no. He 
seemed disappointed. He has also asked the Minister of 
Finance whether there were any signs of a breakdown in 
our national credit leading to popular dissatisfaction, and 
when the Minister of Finance said no, his Majesty again 
looked discontented. He has also asked the Minister of 
War what is the outlook for a military scandal of suffi- 
cient proportions to bring about a popular uprising, and 
when the Minister of War declared there was absolutely 
no such scandal in sight, his Majesty shook his head sadly 
and walked away. Now, what does this mean? " 

I had a glimpse of what it might mean only this morn- 
ing, when the Caliph came into my office, just off the Bureau 
of Engraving and Sociology, and sat down on the edge of 
the typewriter desk. 

" Sinbad," he said, " I shall never get my score down 
to 90 while the war lasts. What with the War Cabinet 
and the administrative bureaus, I am kept busy five hours 
in the day. For that matter, when peace comes, it will 
not be much better. The responsibilities of kingship are 
many. On the other hand, look at what has happened to 
Nicholas of Russia; absolutely no worry and all the time 
he wants." 

He looked straight in front of him. 



$6 SINBAD 

" But, Sire, your game is improving," I said. 

" I don't imagine I shall ever make an 85 if I keep at it 
to the end of my life, Sinbad. I haven't the time for prac- 
tice. The people of Mesopotamia are terribly loyal." 

He sighed. 



J 



STORY OF THE TROUBLED FOUR 

SHORTLY after the declaration of war against Mada- 
gascar, the Commander of the Faithful was walking 
with his sword-bearer after nightfall in the outskirts of the 
capital, when his ears were suddenly assailed by the sound 
of lamentation emanating from a little group of citizens 
dispersed upon the steps of an old mosque in various atti- 
tudes of grief. They were four in number. 

Addressing himself to the one of the four who seemed to 
have the firmest control over his emotions, a portly mer- 
chant of middle-age, in a silk hat with a garden rake across 
his knees and a package of seeds and a watering-pot in his 
arms, " Bismillah," said the disguised monarch, " why this 
effluxion of woe at a time when all good men should cheer- 
fully be mustering for the service of Caliph and country? " 

The citizen in the silk hat thereupon proceeded, without 
letting go either the seeds or the watering-pot, to smite his 
breast with his fists, a performance which elicited a glint 
of admiration from the dusky eyes of the royal sword- 
bearer. 

" Sympathetic strangers," said he of the silk hat, " you 
have hit upon the crux of the tragedy. Personally I am 
bewailing the vagueness of the farmer and the treachery 
of the soil, in this hour of crisis." 

"Now by the beards of the Board of Estimate, that is 
57 



58 SINBAD 

an extraordinary way of putting things. Speak! " said the 
Caliph, and he squatted on the mosque steps at the elbow 
of the man with the silk hat. 

" I am only too happy to explain," said the latter. " Up 
to the outbreak of the war I was a trafficker in securities 
and contingencies in the Street of the Golden Wall. In 
my day I have sold short and I have bought long and some- 
times I have played both ends against the middle, and so 
I prospered. Nevertheless, when war was declared I re- 
duced my office hours to a minimum, purchased a large plot 
of ground on the other side of the Tigris, and prepared to 
do my bit, as the Koran puts it, for the nation's food 
supply." 

" For this thou shalt have honor in this world and glory 
in the bosom of the Prophet," said the Caliph solemnly. 

" Let me be frank," said the man of the silk hat. " While 
I am sincerely anxious to do my best for the country, there 
was an auxiliary reason. I frequently wearied of my trade 
in the Street of the Golden Wall and found myself longing 
for the eternal simplicities and realities. Ours is after all 
a precarious and unsubstantial occupation. We deal in 
credits, promises, futures, hypotheses, discounts, and all 
matter of vague commodities. Now, I said to myself, com- 
pared with these shadowy objects, what is the most sub- 
stantial, real, tangible, definite thing there is? And the 
answer was obviously, Earth, the good, fresh soil, which 
no Board of Directors, or merger, or pool, or decision of 
the Supreme Cadis can alter or take away. And I said to 
myself, in contrast with my own speculative trade, what is 
the most definite, tangible, real occupation? And the an- 



THE TROUBLED FOUR 59 

swer was obviously, the farmer's. Kismet. It was not 
to be." 

" And wherefore? " said the Caliph. 

The merchant deposited the watering-pot and the pack- 
age of seeds on the ground, rested the rake against the wall 
of the mosque, removed his hat and hung it on one of the 
prongs, and wiped his brow. 

" The vaguest, obscurest, most hesitant and uncertain of 
human beings is the tiller of the soil," he said. " A farmer 
knows neither time nor space nor the weather. Ask him 
what is the distance to the village of Hammadieh and he 
will reckon that he really couldn't say, but after you had 
walked quite a piece it might be perhaps half a camel's 
journey. Ask him how large a farm he cultivates, and he 
tells you he has never stopped to calculate, and there is 
besides the new pasture on the other side of the road; 
though there is no apparent reason why the new pasture 
should prevent him from making his calculation. Ask him 
what is his yield for the acre, and he says that it varies 
a good deal, but he will not tell you the maximum and 
minimum of variation. Ask him whether it will rain in 
the night, and he says that it is very hard to tell at this 
time of the year." 

" Distressful citizen," said the Caliph, " you are judging 
from the standpoint of the curious, febrile, talkative deni- 
zen of the towns. What matters it to the farmer whether 
the village of Hammadieh lies six miles beyond his domain 
or twelve? In either case the village will be there when 
one gets there. What matters all this speculation about 
acreage and croppage? If Allah wills there will be enough 



60 SINBAD 

to pay the interest on the mortgage; if not, not. 
Selah." 

But he of the silk hat was not listening. 

" You see a rural child playing about on the threshing- 
floor," he said. " You smile at her and ask her father 
how many are the children the will of Allah has bestowed 
on him. Now you would imagine his knowledge of that 
would be fairly definite. But he only ponders and replies 
that there are quite a good many if you reckon Selim, who 
lives down yonder by the Shaat-el-Mustapha, and if you 
count Fatima — he calls her Fatimmy — who is married to 
the keeper of the caravanserai down in Hammadieh. Now 
I ask you, is a son any the less a son because he lives quite 
a ways down towards the Shaat-what you may call it, and 
is a daughter any the more a daughter because she is mar- 
ried to an innkeeper on the other side of the Tigris? " 

In a new outburst of grief he reached up to his gray 
locks and tore out a handful. This seemed to quiet him 
and he proceeded: 

" As to the tilling of the soil itself, honorific stranger, 
it is the most speculative business there is. I have bought 
and read garden books and I know. Either the garden 
has too much acid or too much alkali; in either case one 
may count upon a superfluity of insect pests and fungi. 
Then there are the vicissitudes of rain, snow, frost, hail, 
drought, flood, sun, cloud, thunder, and the chance that 
a bumper crop in Baluchistan will knock the bottom out of 
the market and compel you to feed your millet to the 
camels." 



THE TROUBLED FOUR 61 

He wept bitterly and we sat silent until his grief might 
abate, which it ultimately did. 

" And that," he said, " oh well-mannered and attentive 
stranger, is the source of my woe. Can it be that after all 
I have given up the comparative security of my occupation 
in the Street of the Golden Wall for a gamble in the sub- 
urbs? And more than that, am I, in the present hour of 
national emergency, doing my best for my country by tak- 
ing chances on a truck farm when I might be rendering 
substantial service by selling Spring barley short in my 
office? By returning to my familiar field of operations 
I can render to my country, in the form of excess profits 
tax, a thousand times the value I can extract from the 
ground in the form of food. That is the sorrow which 
gnaws at my heart. I have spoken." 

At this moment there arose one of his companions who 
had hitherto been silent, and he tore his outing shirt in 
two and cried, " What is your grief to mine — " 

But of that later. 



STORY OF THE TROUBLED FOUR 
(Continued) 

THE Caliph, as became a man of tact and discernment, 
waited courteously until the second stranger had fin- 
ished rending his shirt and beating his head against the 
steps of the mosque, a process which seemed to afford him 
considerable relief. 

Then, in a voice of commiseration and wonder, " Tell me, 
Disconsolate Inhabitant," he said, " who are you and what 
grief impels you, in these times of war, to destroy a gar- 
ment which, at the very least, might be converted into two 
dozen tobacco pouches for our brave men in the training 
camps? " 

The other replied in a voice that still showed the effects 
of the violent exercise in which he had been indulging, " I 
am, oh Inquirer, a delegate to the National Council of 
Elders from the Thirteenth Bagdad District. I am looking 
forward to the imminent arrival of a Commission from our 
ally, the Government of Russia. And I am torn in two 
between the correct pronunciation of Tchkheidze and 
regret for my neglected education. When the time 
arrives for filing past the Russian commissioners and 
shaking hands, what am I to say to them in their native 
tongue? " 

" It is a grave problem," said the Caliph thoughtfully, 

62 



THE TROUBLED FOUR 63 

" though I am under the impression that the accent in 
the Russian language is usually on the twelfth syllable 
from the end." 

" Even so," said the unhappy stranger. " Only none of 
the words in my Russian vocabulary answers to that de- 
scription. I know ' samovar/ and I know ' Duma,' and I 
know 'caviar'; but I ask you, are these enough to ex- 
press the pride and the confidence I experience in welcom- 
ing the cooperation of the Russian people in the struggle 
of democracy against autocracy? There is only one possible 
answer." 

" You were speaking of a neglected education," said the 
Caliph. " If in your youth you were deprived of the oppor- 
tunities for self-improvement — " 

The stranger wiped the tears from his eyes and shook 
his head. 

" Oh, I was educated all right," he said. " I learned 
how to bound Bolivia and Nova Zembla and how to deter- 
mine the physiological effects of alcohol. I passed my ex- 
aminations in adenoids, comparative literature, and how 
many square yards of wall paper are necessary to paper 
a room without covering the floor and the windows. Later 
I became acquainted with the structural difficulties of Cae- 
sar's bridge across the Rhine, a subject complicated by the 
fact that the bridge was chiefly built in the ablative abso- 
lute. I was taught how many parasangs the Greeks marched 
from a town that has been in ruins for two thousand years 
to a place that was never of any importance. I read 
'L'Abbe Constantin ' and 'La Bataille des Dames/ but 



64 SINBAD 

the other day, when we were preparing to receive Joffre 
Pasha—" 

The Caliph touched his jeweled turban. 

" A great warrior, though an infidel ; Allah deal with him 
according to his deserts," he said. 

" When we were told that we should have a chance to 
shake Joffre Pasha's hand and speak to him in his own 
language," went on the Elder from the Thirteenth Bag- 
dad District, " I was in a panic. What good to me were 
all my efforts with the irregular verbs in the language of 
the French? I could neither understand the man nor speak 
to him. In my trouble I consulted one of my fellow- 
Elders, from a back-country district near Baluchistan, where 
the people practise a broad humor often bordering on fri- 
volity. It had occurred to me that I might stop in front 
of our distinguished visitor and shout 'Vive le Joffre! ' 
But this friend of mine, El Djones, shook his head and said 
the secret service men might interfere. 

" ' But you might do this,' said El Djones ; ' you don't 
have to deliver an oration, you know. Just shake his hand 
and say, " Bapaume, n'est-ce pas? " or something felicitous 
like that. It'll show him you have been following up his 
work.' 

" But that hardly seemed appropriate. ' If only I could 
recall a phrase or two from " L'Abbe Constantin," ' I said. 
' Only that's the curse of modern education.' 

" 'But you remember something? * said El Djones. 

" ' Yes,' I said bitterly, ' I remember Do you have the 
Umbrella of the sister-in-law? ' 

" ' That's all right,' said El Djones. ' Joffre Pasha won't 



THE TROUBLED FOUR 65 

know what you are saying to him anyhow. And if he does, 
so much the better; he might answer you. Say to him, 
" Bonjour, Marshal Joffre, do you have the umbrella of the 
sister-in-law? " and he'll smile and probably say, " No, but 
I have the goat of the Kaiser," or something equally reas- 
suring.' And here El Djones slapped his leg and said it 
wasn't a bad joke at that; which is the manner of these 
people from out Baluchistan way. 

" At any rate, I left him and sought counsel from an- 
other of my fellow-members, Beg Bey Baw-stan, who came 
into his French irregular verbs by inheritance. He offered 
generously to write out a sentence or two in the language 
of the French which I might commit to memory. I was 
grateful, but declined. 

" ' That would scarcely come from the heart,' I said. 

" ' True, if odd,' remarked Beg Bey Baw-stan. ' But 
why not wait till this other emissary of the French, this 
Sub- Vizier Viviani, has spoken? Something might occur to 
you in the meanwhile.' 

" ' I am afraid I sha'n't understand him, either/ I said. 

" ' Just keep an eye on me/ said Beg Bey Baw-stan, ' I'll 
tip you off.' 

" It was handsome in him. While the Sub- Vizier Viviani 
was speaking, I kept my eyes glued on Beg Bey Baw-stan, 
and when at the end of an impassioned sentence, delivered 
with all the native eloquence of the French, Beg Bey broke 
out in laughter, I went him one better. A good many of 
our fellow-Elders followed our example. Later I discov- 
ered that Beg Bey's amusement was evoked by Sub-Vizier 
Viviani's statement that in the last six months his coun- 



66 SINBAD 

trymen had laid down 643,253 additional acres in buck- 
wheat. 

" At any rate, so absorbed was I in Beg Bey's appreciation 
of the Sub-Vizier Viviani's speech that T forgot all about 
my salutation to Joffre Pasha. And then the line formed 
and we began to march past." 

The stranger bent his head and was silent. 

" Error is human and Allah is the Compassionate," said 
the Caliph; " what did you say to this great Infidel? " 

The stranger stifled a sob: 

" I said, ' Hooray, Joffre, merci beaucoup! * " 

The Caliph's sword-bearer snickered and was checked by 
a stern glance from his master. 

" But that wasn't half bad," said the Caliph. 

The stranger refused to be comforted. 

" Well, perhaps I got away with it that time," he said. 
u But what will happen when the Russians come? " 



STORY OF THE WOMEN WHO STOOD STILL 

DUTY alone took me away from Bagdad when I least 
wanted to go. The Food Conservation Bill was be- 
ing debated in the House of Elders. Only fifty-seven more 
speeches twelve hours long and thirty-two unconstitu- 
tional amendments stood between the bill and the Caliph's 
signature, an event on which I had set my heart to witness. 
However, because of the sultry weather, several members 
of the House of Elders lost the drift of their own remarks 
when they were just in sight of the peroration about Meso- 
potamia First and had to start all over again. So it turned 
out that I lost nothing because of my absence from Bagdad, 
and in a sense did enjoy a refreshing holiday. 

The circumstances of my departure were curious. I re- 
turned early one morning to my quarters in the palace, 
hard by the Bureau of Engraving and Polar Exploration, 
from an all-night session of the House of Elders where an 
acrimonious debate was under way on an amendment to the 
Food Conservation bill providing for the erection of an 
astronomical observatory at Nineveh. On my table I found 
a telegram. It was dated the night before at the capital of 
Turkestan and it said, " Come at once — Hassan." It was 
from the young Khan whose wedding I had but lately at- 
tended here in Bagdad. 

Immediately I sought out the Commander of the Faith- 
ful, whom I found practising with his new patent putter on 

67 



68 SINBAD 

the golden carpet in the Hall of the Thousand Anchorites. 
He read the disturbing missive, shook his head sadly, and 
remarked: " It's about Ayesha. You had better go, Sin- 
bad." 

" But if it be the Princess who is in need," I said, " per- 
haps your Majesty himself — " 

" No, Sinbad," he said ; " it's about Ayesha, all right, but 
it's Hassan who needs you. I have been expecting this for 
some time." 

In the early afternoon of the third day I was in the 
Turkestan capital. I bestowed my luggage at a caravanserai 
where the scribe offered me a room with a lapis-lazuli bath- 
tub at twelve sequins a day, and I said one at two sequins 
would do. He said, " Very well," and ran a comb through 
his perfumed beard, and I left him and made my way to 
the palace of the Khan. 

Before the gates of the palace a multitude was gathered. 
When I had pushed my way through the throng I saw two 
women who stood sentinel on either side of the gates and 
held aloft large banners of white on a cross staff. As I 
looked closely at one of the women, I knew her, even through 
her veil. 

" Your Royal Highness," I stammered. 

" Even so," said Ayesha, but she neither smiled nor yet 
gave any other sign of recognition. 

" And these banners? " I said. 

" Read," she replied. 

I read the inscription on one banner and it said: " Six 
Million Women in Turkestan are in Fetters." And I read 



WOMEN WHO STOOD STILL 69 

the inscription on the other banner and it said: " Make 
Turkestan Safe for Its Mothers." And I asked the Prin- 
cess Ayesha, now Queen of Turkestan, what it all meant, 
and she said: " I am picketing, Sinbad." 

" Against whom, Royal Highness? " 

" Against the Government." 

" That is to say, against your royal husband, the Khan? " 

" Even so, Sinbad." 

Much perplexed, I made my way into the palace and 
was brought into the presence of the young Khan, who 
graciously raised me from the floor after the fifth prostra- 
tion only, and said: " Thank you for coming, Sinbad. I 
am exceedingly unhappy. You saw her? " 

" Majesty," I said, " whatever may be the Queen's polit- 
ical views and tactics, I am convinced that in her heart you 
still—" 

" Now by the Kumyss-Drinking Dervish of Samarcand ," 
cried the Khan, " but that is the confusion of it all. Two 
hours in the day Ayesha is my enemy. But when she is 
through with sentinel duty she appears before me and in- 
quires whether I have been lonely and have I taken my mint 
tablets. In passing through the gates while she is on her 
beat I have on occasion tried to address her, but she has 
refused to recognize me. And on the other hand, at dinner 
I have sometimes ventured to ask her what ought to be 
done about woman's rights in Turkestan, and she says: 
1 Don't let's talk about such things, Hassan; it's so pleasant 
here.' " 

" Pride of the Steppes," I said, " it is indeed confusing." 



7 o SINBAD 

" It is distracting/' said the young Khan. " Sometimes 
she will come in from sentinel duty and ask me how I feel ; 
and I will say that I have a bad headache. 'Why? ' says 
Ayesha. ' Worrying about you out there in the sun and 
amidst a gaping crowd.' c You're a dear/ she will say, and 
bring me a wet towel for my throbbing temples. On such 
occasions, Sinbad, I can only ask myself: Am I or am I 
not a bigamist? " 

" It is like the old days in Bagdad, Majesty," I ventured. 

He smiled wanly. " Once when she had been at her post 
for near two hours and I watching her from the window, I 
recalled that she had eaten little for lunch, and I sent her 
out some sandwiches. You know the kind women like — a 
bit of pomegranate jam and an olive between two wafers. 
She sent them back indignantly. But when she came off 
duty, she asked for the sandwiches." 

" There is a simple way out, Majesty," I said. " Why not 
give them the vote? " 

He gave a proud lift to his chin that reminded me irre- 
sistibly of his great ancestor, Genghis Khan, whom, of 
course, I will not pretend to have met in person. 

" I will not be coerced," he said. Then, thoughtfully: 
"It isn't quite fair, Sinbad. Here they are asking for a 
man's privileges and they employ a woman's weapons. She 
knows how it hurts me to have her out there for two hours 
on the hot pavement; and as for throwing her into prison — 
well, you can judge for yourself. So I have my Minister of 
Public Traffic run her in once in so often, and then I have a 
lot of blank pardons already signed; and thus we live. If 
she were only permanently in opposition, I could harden my- 



WOMEN WHO STOOD STILL 71 

self to punishment, out of a sense of national duty. But 
just as I am about to take action, she comes in, takes off her 
sash, throws it on the piano, and offers me nougat." 

" It is confusing," I said. 

" It confuses a great many people. You know, there are 
two parties among the women themselves. The Maximalists 
insist that Ayesha has no right to give me a wet cloth when 
I get a headache from her picketing, but the Minimalists 
say it's all right. And then there's poor Abdullah." 

" You spell that with a double 1, Majesty? " 

"Yes," he said. "Abdullah is the head watchman of 
the royal grounds. The other day he appears before me 
and beats his forehead on the carpet and cries, ' Grant, oh 
Star of the Oxus, that I may be released from your royal 
service.' I asked him why and he said his nervous system 
was breaking down because of Ayesha. As his Queen she 
expects him to preserve order, and as suffragist she is sub- 
ject to arrest. * From 2 to 4 in the afternoon she is under 
your authority, Abdullah,' I said to him. But he said the 
other day when his own time-piece showed ten minutes to 
four, and he ordered her to keep on moving, she showed 
him her wrist watch and it was two minutes after the hour 
and he was guilty of Use majeste, which means boiling oil. 
' Under the circumstances,' pleaded Abdullah, c what is a 
poor cop to do? ' " 

" Perhaps with a sense of humor," I ventured. 

" But I have none," Hassan replied. " Now it's different 
with that light-hearted Minister of Finance of mine, old 
Hafiz ben AH. His wife is in the same picketing squad with 
Ayesha. Hafiz says that formerly he never saw his wife 



72 SINBAD 

because she was so busy. But now he knows where to find 
her every day between 2 and 4." 

" In that case there is only one solution, Majesty," I 
said. " Give them the vote and make Turkestan Safe for 
Its Fathers." 



STORY OF THE COST OF LIVING 

THE circumstances under which an offer of the post of 
Minister of High and Low Finance for Mesopotamia 
was recently made to the writer were as follows. I recount 
the fact in no spirit of personal exultation, but merely to 
show how far-reaching is the influence of the press. 

No newspaper story of modern times, I have been told, 
ever attracted as much attention as my recent dispatch in 
which I described the sinking of five million tons of Meso- 
potamian shipping by the Madagascar submarines in the 
course of a month. Inasmuch as the entire merchant ma- 
rine of Mesopotamia has never exceeded two and a half 
million tons, one will understand the sensation which my dis- 
patch created in Bagdad. There was a demand for inves- 
tigation in the House of Elders, the Minister of the Navy 
suffered a severe nervous breakdown and took to bed and 
my dispatch must have come to the Caliph's attention. 

At any rate, early one forenoon, the Commander of the 
Faithful, having holed out in three on the difficult four- 
teenth, which is one below par, and having addressed his 
customary brief prayer of thanks in the direction of Mecca, 
turned to me and said, " Sinbad, does the difference between 
twelve million sequins and fifteen billion sequins strike you 
as very important? " 

I said, " Majesty, I am a plain newspaper man, and three 
billion dollars one way or the other means nothing to me." 



74 SINBAD 

" How, then," said the Caliph, " would you like to be 
Minister of Finance in my Cabinet? " 

" You are jesting, Illuminated One," I said; but his Maj- 
esty went on to explain. 

It would seem that on the preceding day the Minister of 
High and Low Finance had a long audience with his Maj- 
esty. In the course of this interview it appeared that the war 
expenditure up to date had reached the sum of fifteen bil- 
lion sequins, that the daily expenditure was now running 
about forty million sequins, and that the national debt at 
the end of the war would probably stand at forty billions. 
Thereupon the Commander of the Faithful, who had been 
listening rather intermittently, interrupted to ask the Min- 
ister of High and Low Finance what progress he had made 
with the Summer Vacation Loan project. 

The Summer Vacation Loan was a pet scheme of his Maj- 
esty's. It called for a bond issue of twelve million sequins 
to pay for a two weeks' vacation for every head of a family 
in Bagdad who could not afford a holiday on his own ac- 
count. 

" I have often thought, Sinbad," said the Caliph, " what 
it must mean to the average laborer to go through his three- 
score years and ten without a bit of playtime in that whole 
long span, without a respite save that which comes to him 
from ill-health and enforced idleness. My Minister of 
Statistics and Elaboration has estimated that there are 400,- 
000 such deserving citizens in Bagdad and that they could 
be sent away for two weeks to the Baluchistan hills or to 
Basra-by-the-Sea at a cost of thirty sequins per head." 

The Minister of High and Low Finance shook his head 



THE COST OF LIVING 75 

and said that the thing was out of the question. There 
was the war to think, of, and after that there would be the 
problem of bringing back the finances of the country to a 
peace basis. To the latter task, he hinted, his Majesty 
should be giving much thought. 

Thereupon the Caliph smote his hand on the table with 
such violence that the Principal Censor stuck his head 
through the door and asked if it was something that ought 
to be written up for the press. But his Majesty told him 
not to be a fool, and, addressing the Minister of High and 
Low Finance, he said, " Know you what, Ali ben Daoud? 
I think it were better for the people of Mesopotamia if we 
never get back to a peace basis." 

"Unquestionably your Majesty is right," said the Min- 
ister of Finance, "if only I understood the drift of your 
remarks." 

" It is very simple, Ali ben Daoud," said the Caliph. 
" Do you remember how on one occasion, some time before 
the war, I wanted two million sequins to erect a public bath- 
house in the workmen's district in Bagdad? You said then 
that the thing was impossible because it would send the 
tax rate up one and one-half points to 2.2345." 

"You have spoken, Undeniable One," said the Finance 
Minister. 

" You will also remember that when I suggested a mini- 
mum wage of three sequins a month for the little girls in 
the Euphrates cotton mills — that was also before the war — 
you said that the State could not assume an expenditure 
which might run up to five million sequins a year for the 
whole country." 



76 SINBAD 

" That was my firm conviction, Majesty," said the Min- 
ister of Finance. 

" But only just now," continued the Caliph, " you recom- 
mended an appropriation of thirty million sequins for the 
construction of a system of water tanks to supply the camels 
that drag the timber that is to go into the new medical 
school that is to train the doctors that are to examine the 
recruits that are to take part in the expedition against Mada- 
gascar. Why is five million sequins in peace time too much 
for the children, and why is thirty million sequins in war 
time a meager appropriation for the camels? " 

" The answer, oh Unapproachable One," said the Min- 
ister, " is very simple. It is because of the unavoidable 
effect of the short-term non-convertible bonds on the pre- 
vailing rate for call money arising from the depleted silver 
reserve in Patagonia." 

" To be sure," said the Caliph. " I never thought of 
that." 

" And besides, your Majesty," said the Minister of High! 
and Low Finance, " is it proper, is it just to burden the 
future generations with taxes to pay for public baths and 
minimum wages for the present generation? We must not 
be selfish. We must think of our children." 

The Caliph waved his hand in fine impatience. 

" I'll tell you what, AH ben Daoud," he said. " On this 
subject of our duty to our children there is altogether too 
much of what Sinbad's infidel countrymen in their quaint 
vernacular call ' bull.' When there is something we very 
much like to do we make it out to be a duty to our children. 



THE COST OF LIVING 77 

And when there is something we are disinclined to do we 
discover that it is our duty to our children not to do it. 
That is what the rascal Nubar Dowleh said when we caught 
him stealing from the Paymaster's funds; he said he was 
providing for his children; only the dancing girls in the 
bazaar could tell another story. As a matter of fact, in the 
course of my private investigations with Mesrour I have 
discovered that those of my subjects who love their children 
most, namely, the poor, are the ones who neglect to provide 
for their future." 

"Who shall question the will of Allah? " muttered the 
Minister of Finance. 

" But suppose my Vacation Loan does impose a burden 
on the future," insisted the Caliph, riding his hobby furi- 
ously. " Why is it different from the war taxes which the 
future generations will have to pay? Put it this way, Ali 
ben Daoud. Why should we be so watchful of our pennies 
when it comes to the cost of living, and pour out our bil- 
lions when it concerns what you might call the cost of 
dying? " 

" The reply is obvious, oh Strenuous One," said the Min- 
ister of Finance. "All you have to do is to multiply the 
bank discounts by the rate of exchange at Amsterdam and 
subtract the quotations on steel billets, f. o. b., at Baby- 
lon." 

"I never thought of that," said the Caliph. " Only it 
seemed to me that if future generations did not object to 
paying taxes on forty billion sequins which represent the 
cost of making the world safe for our children, they might 



78 SINBAD 

not object to paying taxes on a twelve million Vacation Loan 
which would make our children safe for the world, by giv- 
ing them a healthier set of fathers." 

" Economic heresy, Sire! " said the Minister. 

The Caliph sighed. But if he was convinced for the 
moment, later his doubts returned. He told me so when he 
made me the offer of Ali Ben Daoud's job. " He will do 
well enough for the war, Sinbad," said the Caliph. " But 
when peace comes I want to go on thinking in billions." 

" But, Ineffable One," I protested. " Your people will not 
permit it. Me, an ignorant stranger and an Infidel! " 

" That's the kind of financier I need," he sighed. 
" Fore! " 



STORY OF THE WOMEN WHO DID NOT 
STAND STILL 

"T^TO chance of its clearing up, Sinbad? " said the 
X\ Caliph. 

We were under a tree near the fifteenth green, his Maj- 
esty, the Principal Censor, and I, and the rain was falling 
in sheets. The Principal Censor had been playing our best 
ball and was 2 up. The Caliph sighed. 

" Personally I shouldn't mind playing it out," said the 
Caliph. (It was his third match since he had taken up the 
game.) "After all, what's a little moisture? How about 
it, P. C? " 

" Your Mightiness has only to command," said the Prin- 
cipal Censor. " Nevertheless, it is the truth that I am ex- 
tremely susceptible to colds in the head, and I hate to take 
quinine in the present national emergency." 

" Be it so," said the Caliph, recalling perhaps the short 
seventeenth over the irrigation canal, where he regularly 
came to grief. " Though I should have made it in less than 
100. What is the record for the course, P. C? " 

" It's blank yards, your Majesty, and it has been done in 
blank," said the Principal Censor, out of force of habit. 

The Caliph sighed, but not in discontent, I thought. 
Just as the storm broke he had run down a thirteen-foot 
putt for a three. So for a time we stood there with our 

79 



80 SINBAD 

backs to the trunk of the mighty palm, wrapped in our 
mackintoshes, and thinking, as men always do in the face 
of nature's magnificent manifestations, of nothing at all. 

Then, " Sinbad," said the Caliph, " know you what G. V." 
— now G. V. is what we call the Grand Vizier when he is not 
present — " would have me do now? He is all for letting 
the women of Mesopotamia vote henceforth ; vote for every- 
thing. He says their services since we went to war have 
proved their fitness for the suffrage." 

" The women of Mesopotamia have done nobly," I said, 
" though it may be questioned whether a step so far-reach- 
ing, so to speak, and yet when one considers — " 

The Caliph laughed out loud. 

" You are making a noise like a diplomat, Sinbad," he 
said. (It is a regrettable fact that ever since his Majesty 
took up golf his vocabulary has been losing in refinement.) 
" It is true that our women have rallied magnificently to 
country and flag. But does it surprise you as much as it 
does the Grand Vizier? " 

" Illustrious," I said, " I am but a plain newspaper man. 
Everything surprises me." 

" Take, now, the case of old P. C. here," said the Caliph, 
patting the other on his shoulder. " Suppose I insisted on 
playing out the eighteen holes and P. C. went home with 
the snuffles. His good wife Bathsheba would immediately 
put his feet into hot water and mustard and give him some 
warm milk with figs to drink. She would then wrap him 
up in blankets and give him aspirin. Suppose, now, that 
the next morning P. C, feeling much better, but still a little 
rocky and sentimental, called his wife unto him and said, 



WOMEN WHO DID NOT STAND STILL 8 1 

' Oh, Bathsheba, thou art indeed one among ten thousand ; 
for when I came home with a cold in the head thou didst 
give me milk with figs to drink instead of setting me to chop 
wood for the fire, and thou didst wrap me in woolens in- 
stead of making me sleep out on the roof in the rain, and 
thou didst give me gentle words instead of assailing me with 
the camel strap. Therefore, do I admit that thou art de- 
serving of much.' " 

" Magnificence," said the Principal Censor, " not thus 
would I address my wife Bathsheba; for the occasion would 
not be special; and if I did, she would think I had gone 
out of my mind." 

"Even so, P. C," said the Caliph. "And the Grand 
Vizier is talking nonsense when he tells me that the war has 
proved this or that of our women, or that our women have 
earned this or that by their behavior during the war. How 
else, think you, did I expect the women of Mesopotamia to 
behave? That they should sell secret information to our 
enemy of Madagascar? That they should fail to go into 
the fields and the workshops when their husbands and sons 
and brothers have been called away? That they should fail 
to go without food when there is less for the children and 
without sleep — aye, and without new clothes, if it comes to 
that bitter test? Is it on record before this that women 
have deserted in the hour of need? For several thousand 
years women have been taking husbands for worse quite as 
often as for better, and what new thing has the war shown? " 

" Yet your allies, the people of Britain, have given the 
vote to women just on that very ground," I said, dropping 
into an argumentative tone of which I should have been in- 



82 SINBAD 

capable under other circumstances; but there is something 
lost to royalty in a raincoat. 

" My allies of Britain," said the Caliph, " a great and 
well-meaning people, have this weakness, that they will do 
things not for the obvious reason, but for some other rea- 
son. They have given the vote to their women because 
there is absolutely no excuse why they should not have done 
so long ago; but they like to think it is because of some- 
thing new about women that the war has shown. The fact 
is, Sinbad, that this war is not a reason, but an opportunity ; 
it supplies people with an occasion for being surprised at 
what they have known all along. It will be so with my 
allies of France. After the war they will give their women, 
the vote in return for the labors and sacrifices which the 
women of France have rendered. Yet France is the coun- 
try where bearded men are not allowed to marry without 
the permission of their Maman." 

" In Britain it is only women of thirty and over who 
will be allowed to vote," I said. 

" That is the genius of Britain," said the Caliph. " It 
would kill an Englishman to go all the way at once. He 
simply will not stand for more than half a loaf; a whole 
loaf would choke him. No doubt the age limit for women 
voters in Britain will be lowered in time, but there will al- 
ways be a provision withholding the suffrage from red- 
haired women between Whitsuntide and Michaelmas in the 
Isle of Man, or something like that." 

" Yet the war has brought about this change," I insisted. 

His Majesty showed temper. 

" Not by teaching us anything new, Sinbad, but by shak- 



WOMEN WHO DID NOT STAND STILL 83 

ing us up," he said. " If it is right to give the women their 
vote now, they should have had it long ago. We don't know 
any more about women now than we did a thousand years 
ago. Only the war has jarred things wide open. It has 
shaken old, lazy habits — " 

" The trouble has all along been clothes, Unapproachable 
One," said the Principal Censor. 

"How clothes?" 

" Pockets, Serenity," said the Principal Censor. " It's 
been hard to concede equality to a sex that specialized in 
discomfort. It is impossible to think of the business of the 
world going on without pockets. By putting on pockets 
man has had his hands free for climbing the ladder of evo- 
lution; but women, no; except on golf coats, where there is 
no conceivable use for pockets. Or umbrellas, your Maj- 
esty. Man gets an umbrella with a crook handle and hangs 
it over his arm ; women must have a straight shaft umbrella 
to immobilize one hand at least. On the contrary, over- 
alls—" 

" P. C," said the Caliph, " you sound like your dis- 
patches, only more amusing." 



STORY OF THE BARMECIDE AND THE AFTER- 
DINNER SPEAKER 

IN the absence of my Reader's Handbook, I do not re- 
call whether it was my namesake Sinbad, or that poor 
devil Hinbad, or only the Barber's Sixth Brother who was 
the guest at the original Barmecide's feast. The reader 
will no doubt recall how that beggar of old Bagdad strayed 
into the home of the wealthy Barmecide, how he was bid- 
den to take his place at the richly laden table, how price- 
less plate was set before him — empty, and how phantom 
dish after phantom dish appeared and disappeared at his 
host's signal, in a manner distracting to a hungry stomach, 
though calculated to delight Mr. Hoover. It is a similar per- 
sonal experience I now have to relate. 

The day before the banquet tendered to the special mis- 
sion from Tegucigalpa by the Bagdad Chamber of Com- 
merce to celebrate the signing of a potash and fisheries con- 
vention between the two countries, I was approached by 
the Principal Censor. Looking about him cautiously and 
speaking behind his hand, the P. C. offered me two tickets 
for the banquet, close to the speakers' table and within easy 
reach of a side exit. 

" But I shouldn't dream of depriving you, P. C," I said. 

" It's a clash of duties, Sinbad," he said. " I have tickets 
for the opening performance of ' The Girl from Kandahar,' 
and it is essential that I be there." 

H 



THE AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER 85 

" You suspect sedition? " I whispered, breathlessly. 

" I can hardly say what I suspect," he replied. " But 
I should be derelict in my service to his Majesty and the 
country if I missed the opening chorus. Besides, Sinbad, 
it occurred to me that you would be glad of the opportunity 
to witness some of our most eminent minds in action. You 
are a serious man, Sinbad, and you represent a serious jour- 
nal of opinion, and thus are eminently qualified to enjoy an 
intellectual feast. It is an offer I would not make to every 
one." 

I took the tickets, glanced at the back to see whether the 
war tax had been paid, and thanked him heartily. In the 
midst of a reporter's busy life an intellectual feast, such as 
P. C. promised, was something to look forward to. His only 
stipulation was that if something happened at the dinner, I 
should call him up not earlier than ten the next morning. 

It was a distinguished assemblage that the first speaker, 
the Minister of Extraneous Affairs, rose to address. I 
leaned forward with sufficient eagerness to send a half-filled 
coffee cup hurtling across the lap of my neighbor, a tall, sun- 
browned young fellow from the Siamese Embassy. He 
thrust back his chair with a deft movement of the knees 
and accepted my apologies courteously. 

The Minister of Extraneous Affairs began by saying that 
the occasion was an historic one. All sources of misunder- 
standing and irritation between two great peoples had been 
removed, and in the absence of unforeseen interruptions the 
two Governments would cooperate in the work of civiliza- 
tion. At this juncture the speaker was irresistibly reminded 
of the story of the Irishman and his goat, who were crossing 



86 SINBAD 

a river in a flat-bottomed skiff, and one of them — presum- 
ably the Irishman — made a remark which neither I nor my 
neighbor from the Siamese Embassy quite caught. The 
rest of the speech was couched in a serious vein, but when it 
was over, candor compels me to say that my intellectual ap- 
petite still bothered me. 

The next speaker was the Ambassador from Tegucigalpa. 
He made me think of a volume I had recently picked up on 
the Principal Censor's table. It was called " Fifteen Thou- 
sand Familiar Phrases," and the Ambassador from Tegu- 
cigalpa used approximately 13,500 of them. He said that co- 
operation had taken the place of competition ; that a man was 
a man for all that; that eternal vigilance was the price of 
liberty; that under no conditions would 2 and 2 make any- 
thing but 4; that genius was the capacity for taking pains; 
that Shakespeare was the common glory of mankind, 
whether Christian or Moslem; and that victory was only a 
question of time. At this point he was reminded of a col- 
ored uncle, named Ebenezer, who was propelling a mule 
along a lonely road at midnight. When the laughter had 
subsided he declared that he knew no better way of sum- 
ming up the status between the two countries than by say- 
ing Nihil humani, unless it was Labor omnia vincit. 

It was all pleasant enough, but not quite what one would 
call intellectually filling. My neighbor from the Siamese 
Embassy was pulling thoughtfully at a fresh-lit cigar, and 
when I turned to him for sympathy he smiled in the most 
eager fashion and handed me the matches. I just had time 
to thank him before the President of the Vaccination Board 
got to his feet. 



THE AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER 87 

The President of the Vaccination Board asserted, without 
fear of contradiction, that the world was smaller to-day than 
ever before and that science had done its share in bringing 
the nations closer to each other. For conflict we were sub- 
stituting cooperation; treaties had no validity without the 
ratification of mutual good will and understanding; and 
whereas Tegucigalpa had something to learn from Mesopo- 
tamia, it was an open secret that Mesopotamia had a good 
deal to learn from Tegucigalpa. It reminded him of the 
insurance agent who intercepted the bridegroom on his way 
to church — 

It needed only a brief exchange of glances with my neigh- 
bor from the Siamese Embassy, and under cover of the 
laughter and applause we were out through the side exit and 
in the open. We walked side by side without speaking until 
we reached the bank of the Tigris and stopped to look 
thoughtfully at the yellow waters. Then bracing myself 
to the question: 

" It bored you? " I said. 

He looked up in surprise. 

" Bored, M'sieu Sinbad? But, no! " 

" There was about the speeches," I said, " a sameness, a 
lack of relief, a sort of Shredded Turnip feeling " — and I 
waved my hands as I imagined they do in the best foreign 
circles. 

" At the contrary," he said, almost somberly. " It made 
one to remember, painfully; ah, too painfully." And then, 
as I showed plainly that I did not understand, " I was on 
the staff at our War Office, M'sieu Sinbad, for one, two 
years. I wrote the daily bulletins." 



88 SINBAD 

" To be sure," I said, though this was the first I had 
heard of the matter. 

" I drafted the communiques during those many, many 
weeks of horror," he went on, scarcely addressing me. 
" When we were beaten back with very great slaughter I 
wrote, ' We are proceeding in accordance with prearranged 
plans and have taken prisoners.' Later I said, ' We have 
succeeded in rectifying our lines.' Later I wrote, ' South of 
X. the enemy's advance guard has been repulsed with great 
loss.' But X. was fifty miles on the wrong side of the posi- 
tion we had occupied three days before. Later I said, 
' There is nothing to report.' There was nothing, indeed, 
which one had the heart to report. It seems impossible 
that one could have lived through that nightmare and writ- 
ten, as I did, day after day. Ah, the power of words, Sin- 
bad, to say all or nothing — I was reminded to-night." 

I put my hand on his shoulder. 

" But you never, in your communiques, were reminded of 
the Scotchman who lost sixpence in Westminster Abbey? " 

He seized my hand in both his own. 

" Thank you, my friend," he said. 



STORY OF THE CALIPH AND THE 
RENTING AGENT 

AYESHA'S telegram was about apartments. So the 
Commander of the Faithful explained when I read to 
him the contents of the utterly unexpected message from 
Turkestan. It said: " Sinbad Bagdad two bathrooms near 
river three bedrooms southern exposure eternally grateful 
Ayesha take papa he knows what I like." 

" It's this way, Sinbad," said his Majesty. " Young 
Hassan Khan is coming down to talk over war matters, es- 
pecially that loan of one hundred million sequins, which will 
take some time. I understand one of the members of the 
Chamber of Elders has already given notice that he expects 
to speak fifty-four hours straight on the loan proposition. 
He says he is going to prove that if a man started counting 
sequins at the time of the birth of the Prophet with an hour 
off for lunch and dinner, it would take him 347 years to 
count one hundred million sequins. I presume it would take 
him 347 years if he started at any other time, but that isn't 
the point. Of course, Ayesha is coming along; and she de- 
clines to stay at the palace. She wrote me to tell you to 
hunt up an apartment for them. Only the thing slipped my 
mind." 

" Indispensable One," I said, not concealing my surprise 
and concern, " surely naught has arisen between your Maj- 
esty and the Princess Ayesha, Allah make her posterity like 

89 



9 o SINBAD 

the sands of the desert, aye, like the submarine sinkings 
when five zeros are added by mistake." 

" Quite the contrary, Sinbad," he said. " The child writes 
that Hassan is very good to her and she is happy, but never- 
theless she misses me." His Majesty paused and blew his 
nose violently. " Only yesterday she sent me the most 
charming prayer rug imaginable, genuine Axminster, and a 
lotion of marvelous efficacy against falling hair, made of un- 
fermented mare's milk and powdered lapis lazuli. But she 
says she would rather go into apartments and save the cost 
of entertainment which her sojourn at the palace would in- 
volve, and I am to give the money instead to the Red 
Crescent." 

" But the cost of the apartment, Majesty? " I said. 

" You might well ask that," said the Caliph. " Also the 
cost of sending up several vanloads of furniture from the 
palace and the cost of a troop of cavalry to keep guard 
around her domicile. But I never did have a good head for 
figures. She does insist on a reasonably cheap apartment, 
and it is for you to find it, Sinbad." 

" And your Majesty will deign to accompany me in the 
hunt, even as Ayesha requests? " 

" To tell the truth," said the Caliph, " I was thinking of 
running out to the links. But the Minister of High and 
Low Finance has asked for a three hours' audience to dis- 
cuss excess profits. So I think I will go with you." 

The Caliph having assumed the simple dress of a mem- 
ber of the Produce Exchange, we made our way to the booth 
of a house agent of my acquaintance whose previous occu- 
pation had been writing unrimed poetry for the public 



THE RENTING AGENT g^ 

sheets, and who had turned to his present calling as a more 
favorable outlet for his highly developed gifts of the im- 
agination. To him I stated concisely the nature of our re- 
quirements. 

" The combination of three bedchambers and two bath- 
rooms is quite unusual," he said. " Now, if you had said 
one bedchamber and three bathrooms, it would be much 
easier. Of course, one might, without excessive outlay, 
convert either the kitchen or the living-room into a bath- 
room." 

" Kindly stick to specifications," said the Caliph, with a 
touch of temper and authority that belied his simple bour- 
geois dress, so that I had to lay an admonitory hand upon 
his sleeve. " And it must be near the Tigris," I said hastily 
to the free-verse writer, in order to divert his attention. 

" Do you want to see the river or hear it? " said the house 
agent. 

" Why not both? " I said. 

" Because the combination is very rare," he replied. " I 
have in mind one apartment from the kitchen window of 
which there is an excellent outlook upon the river and the 
Bridge of Boats. But it's thirteen stories up with as many 
intervening pianos. And there is another where the soft 
lap of the waters and the cries of the boatmen come up de- 
lightfully from around the corner, but the outlook is upon a 
moving-picture theater. However, let us go and see." 

Having said this, he rose, donned his kaftan, locked the 
door of the booth, and hung upon it a sign which said, 
" Will return immediately." I reminded him that our busi- 
ness might hold him for several hours. 



92 SINBAD 

" Oh, that's all right," he said, and we started off. But 
we had not walked far before he turned around. 

" Now, as to the front entrance," he said. " Do you like 
Hindu Renaissance with elephants and the Goddess Kali, 
or would you prefer something in Early Chinese with 
dragons and a pagoda? " 

" Is there any essential difference? " asked the Caliph. 

" There is three times as much carving in the Hindu, and 
it naturally comes higher," said the house agent. " Per- 
sonally I prefer the primitive blues and reds of the Chinese." 
There, I thought, spoke the poet. 

But when we drew up before a magnificent doorway thir- 
ty-six feet high, with palm trees in tubs on either side, " Per- 
haps this will suit you best," said the house agent. " It's 
our latest composite housekeeping style, with central refrig- 
eration. You see how the architect has combined the 
Hindu with the Chinese and thrown in just a touch of the 
Late Kamchatka." 

The Caliph stared in awe at the monumental facade. 

" Now, by Allah," he said, " who of my — who of his Maj- 
esty's subjects can afford to dwell in such regal luxury? " 

" Nobody can," said the house agent, " but there is only 
one apartment vacant." 

Inside we were taken in charge by the Second Deputy 
Administrator and were rapidly lifted to the eleventh floor 
in a car manipulated by a young woman in simple crimson 
and gold. 

" That would be the effects of the war," said the Caliph, 
half aloud. " It must be a monotonous life for a woman." 

" Yet it is a step away from the confinement of the home 



THE RENTING AGENT 93 

and towards freedom," said the house agent, whom I knew 
for a poet, but now began to suspect also for a cynic. 

The Second Deputy Administrator threw open the door 
of an apartment and cautioned us to be careful of a sudden 
corner in the hall. " This gets plenty of light during the 
summer solstice and shortly before the spring equinox," he 
said. " At other times we use electricity. There are six 
rooms altogether, and this self-contained suite of four rooms 
is the haremlik." 

" But why four rooms out of the six for the women? " 
asked the Caliph. 

The Second Deputy Administrator looked at him with a 
faint touch of pity, and the Caliph's beard began to vibrate. 
I intervened hastily. 

"The prospective tenant is a good Moslem, yet he has 
but one wife," I said. 

The Second Deputy Assistant looked dubious. 

" In that case," he said, " we should require unexception- 
able financial references. Now, Abdul Malek, across the 
hall, has four wives, and I believe he is considering a fifth." 

" It would be noisy with so many children about," I said. 

He looked at us with frank astonishment. 

" There are no children," he said. 



STORY OF THE PRINCIPAL CENSOR AND 
THE ULCERATED BICUSPID 

ABOVE the din of a world war the normal demands of 
life clamor to be heard. Take the toothache, for in- 
stance. 

I was strolling the other afternoon in one of the quiet 
streets that lie behind the Grand Bazaar when I grew aware 
of a familiar form moving feebly some paces in front of me 
and hugging close the shadow of the garden walls. It was 
the Principal Censor, whose absence from his duties for sev- 
eral days I had wondered at. 

Hastening after him, " Hail, oh Hajji Ali," I said, " and 
may Allah grant you all the comfort attainable under the 
present extraordinary conditions of humidity. All is well? " 

The Principal Censor glanced at me sideways and up- 
ward. 

" Ugh, ugh," he said. 

" You have been out of town? " I queried, somewhat puz- 
zled by his brevity. 

" Mum, mum," he replied, and shook his head. Then, 
with a start, " Forgive me, Sinbad," he said, " but I speak 
out of force of habit. Even now I come from the dentist. 
It is his custom of conversation to ask questions that call 
for a somewhat detailed reply and immediately thereupon 
to thrust a cotton wad into your mouth. Under the circum- 
stances, you either reply, ' Ugh, ugh,' or ' Mum, mum.' " 

94 



THE ULCERATED BICUSPID 95 

And to be sure, as I looked close, I saw that the side of 
the Principal Censor's face which he kept concealed in the 
shadow of the wall was even like the full moon of Ramadan, 
whereas the opposite cheek suggested a consumptive maiden 
by Botticelli. 

" Believe me infinitely prostrated, Hajji Ali," I cried. 

" Not at all, Sinbad," he said. " There's no pain what- 
ever; it's the confounded look of the thing." 

" But how came it about? " 

" Who shall say? " he replied cheerfully. " Overwork, 
perhaps." 

" Surely, you don't bite things out of the dispatches," I 
jested feebly. 

He was good enough to laugh. " No, but it's wearing on 
the nerves; a cold draft of air, and there you are. I am 
really much better." 

" And who has been doing your work in the meanwhile? " 

" That was quite a problem, Sinbad," he said. " At first 
I divided it between the Embargo Board and the Bureau of 
Latitude and Longitude. But they fell out and quarreled. 
So I hit upon the plan of publishing everything just as it 
came over the wires, marking it ' Passed by the Censor.' 
Naturally nobody believed what they read. I flatter my- 
self it was a happy idea." 

Suddenly his face darkened. 

" I fear complications, Sinbad. I admire Al Firuzd as a 
man and have little to say against him as a dentist; but his 
manner of conducting conversation opens the way to misun- 
derstandings. There will be rumors afloat, and if they 
should come to the ear of the Caliph, it might be unpleas- 



96 SINBAD 

ant. Do you mind walking on the other side of me as we 
cross the street? " 

I was glad to do what I could to camouflage that full- 
blown left jaw, and as we walked he explained. It seems 
that after three days of intermittent rheumatic disturbances 
and loss of sleep, his condition obtruded itself on the atten- 
tion of the Commander of the Faithful. 

" What is wrong with you, P. C? " said the Caliph. 
" Here are no less than two paragraphs and several rows 
of figures which ordinarily you would have deleted like a 
shot." 

Thereupon the Principal Censor confessed. 

" Drop your work at once and go over to see Al Firuzd,'' 
said the Caliph. " Never mind if the enemy finds out a thing 
or two in your absence." 

When Hajji Ali was seated in the dentist's chair, Al 
Firuzd tilted back his patient's head and said:, " Where 
does it hurt? " 

" Here," said the Principal Censor, and drew a line from 
his ear to his chin and up again to the root of his nose. 

Al Firuzd showed just a trace of irritation. 

" Are you speaking now as a censor or as a patient? " 
he said. 

" As the latter," said Hajji Ali. 

" Then don't try to suppress information; specify, please." 
But as the Principal Censor made attempt to comply: 
" Open your mouth," said Al Firuzd, and with the blunt end 
of his probe he tapped, kindly, but firmly, 

" Ugh, ugh," said the Principal Censor. 



THE ULCERATED BICUSPID 97 

" Right you are," said Al Firuzd, and picked up his ex- 
ploring needle. 

" Did that hurt? " he asked, after a while. 

" Quite a bit." 

" I was confident it would," said Al Firuzd. 

" Then why," said the Principal Censor, with the sug- 
gestion of tears in his eyes, " could you not have taken it 
for granted? " 

But Al Firuzd turned to his instrument desk and busied 
himself with needles and little bottles of dark fluid, hum- 
ming to himself gently. 

" I've located the trouble," he said. "It's the third max- 
illary phalange of the second intercostal bicuspid." " And, 
do you know, Sinbad," said the Principal Censor, " after 
long concentration upon the subject-matter of a censor's 
business it was pleasant to hear something so beautifully 
definite." 

At any rate: " Do you know what, Hajji Ali? " said the 
dentist. " Three months from now there won't be a single 
Madagascar submarine left in the seven seas, and six months 
from now there will be peace, on our own terms. We out- 
number them now three to one in men and five to one in 
guns." 

" My own opinion, Al Firuzd," said the Principal Censor, 
" is that—" 

" Open your mouth, please. That's it." Al Firuzd in- 
serted a cylinder of absorbent cotton under the upper lip, 
held up his mirror, studied it carefully and said: 

" The food shortage in Madagascar is acute. There are 



98 SINBAD 

riots everywhere. Before winter the country will be in full 
revolt. What do you imagine the Government of Madagas- 
car will do then? " 

" Ugh, ugh/' said the Principal Censor. 

Al Firuzd worked upon him for the space of five minutes, 
removed the cotton wadding, and instructed him to rinse his 
mouth. 

" Of course," said the dentist, " we shall insist on com- 
plete reparation. For Italy we shall insist on Trieste, the 
Trentino, and the Adriatic coast line — " 

" We certainly shall — " said the Principal Censor. 

" Open your mouth, please," said Al Firuzd. 

It was manifestly unfair, complained the Principal Cen- 
sor. " I leave it to you, Sinbad, whether it is right to sup- 
press or distort a man's words like that. What I was going 
to say in reply to his statement of Italy's claims, of course, 
was, ' We certainly shall not' but he cut me off before the 
' not.' And now Al Firuzd goes about and vapors about the 
war, and quotes me as his authority. Only yesterday he was 
telling Abu Hassan, chief auditor in the Department of Odds 
and Ends, that we have two million men in port ready to 
sail. He said that he had made that statement in my pres- 
ence and I had not contradicted it. How could I? He had 
a pound of cotton and iodine in my mouth. As a matter 
of fact, I did my best. I said, ' Ugh, ugh,' and waved my 
hands, but all he said was, ' It'll be over in a minute.' It 
isn't fair, it isn't fair, Sinbad." 

Just then a crowd of young girls passed by, and the Prin- 
cipal Censor opened his newspaper hurriedly and buried his 



THE ULCERATED BICUSPID 99 

face in the advertisements. But when we were once more 
in a deserted byway he returned to his grievance. 

" Not that it makes any difference with Al Firuzd if you 
seize your chance and speak out. I did so on one occasion. 
He had been wondering how long it would take to send our 
army across the sea. I looked up into his pleasant, thought- 
ful countenance, warmed to the kindly gleam in his eye, and, 
my mouth being free by chance, said: ' Al Firuzd, we have 
456 transports with a carrying capacity of 347,685 men and 
their equipment.' It was a secret for which the editor of 
the Buzzer would have given a year of his life. But Al 
Firuzd smiled down at me and said: 

" ' Open your mouth, please.' " 



STORY OF THE CONGESTED WAR WORKERS 

FROM no less a source than the Caliph himself I gather 
that unless traffic congestion in the capital is imme- 
diately relieved the whole conduct of the war will come to 
a stop. It is impossible for the regular members of the Gov- 
ernment to move about the streets, the bazaars, and the 
public offices because of the influx of Men on the Spot. 
Their number has been estimated by the Bureau of Statis- 
tics and Elaboration at something like a quarter of a mil- 
lion. About two-thirds of these, roughly, have come down 
to find out for themselves how the Government is running 
the war, and the rest are here to tell the Government how 
to run it. 

Only this morning I was accosted by a stranger who de- 
scribed himself as special correspondent for the Ctesiphon 
Morning Glory. He arrived in town the night before. He 
said there was only one way of dealing effectively with the 
Madagascar submarines. You must stretch one chain of 
electric contact nets between the Cape of Good Hope and 
the mouth of the Red Sea, another chain from Ceylon to 
New Guinea, and patrol the rest of the Indian Ocean with 
wooden submarine chasers equipped with triple expansion 
oil-burning turbines. He then asked me the way to his 
hotel at the corner of Fatima Road and the Street of the 
Obstreperous Camel, saying that he had lost his way no less 
than seven times since ten o'clock last night. 

ioo 



CONGESTED WAR WORKERS ioi 

On the other hand there are special correspondents in 
town who have been more fortunate. One such, with whom 
I made acquaintance over a simple meal of fig paste and 
curds at the eatinghouse of a Thousand Glazed Tiles, told 
me that he was about to set out on his return trip of three 
weeks by mule-back to the Kashgar Mountains after a very 
profitable study of the war at close quarters. He had inter- 
viewed everybody worth while, and never failed to secure 
the " inside hashish," which is a popular phrase for secret 
and reliable information. The Minister of the Navy, the 
Minister of Coordination, the Minister of High and Low 
Finance and the Chief Secretary of Wear and Tear told 
him, in confidence, that the country was united and enthu- 
siastic for the war, that the army and the navy were ready 
for any task that might be assigned to them, that the sup- 
port of Allah was assured, and that the struggle would be 
carried to a definite and triumphant conclusion in accord- 
ance with prearranged plans. " Six weeks on mule-back," 
said the stranger, " is quite a job, but it was worth it." 

I narrated this incident to the Commander of the Faith- 
ful, and he smiled grimly. I found his Majesty on the top 
of the Tower of Abu Bekr, which is, as you know, the high- 
est structure in Bagdad, being 600 cubits high and dedicated 
in normal times to bridal couples on their honeymoon. 

" I have come hither, oh Sinbad," said the Caliph, " for 
the purpose of obtaining a bird's-eye view of the war. It is 
either that or running off to the Baluchistan hills for the 
necessary quiet. As you see, it is comparatively secluded 
here. It is true that half-way up the Tower I was inter- 
cepted by a special correspondent from the Caspian Sea, 



102 SINBAD 

who prostrated himself and cried, ' Sire, how about the mil- 
let and barley supply, and what are the chances of Russia 
making a separate peace? ' I answered the poor wretch in 
the affirmative and made my way up. At the next turn I 
was stopped by a visitor from the coast of Coromandel, who 
stood on his hands, rolled his eyes, and cried, ' Sire, get busy 
in the name of Allah 1 ' Still, as I have said, it is restful 
compared with conditions at the palace. They are four 
thick under the windows down there." 

" Forgive them, oh Altitudinous One," I said. " It is but 
natural that they should wish to see and learn for them- 
selves." 

" I am not blaming them, Sinbad," said his Majesty. " My 
subjects are entitled to know what we are doing, and particu- 
larly in such instances where we do not quite know our- 
selves." 

Now the strange part of it all is this: while hundreds of 
thousands of earnest investigators are flocking to Bagdad 
to find out how the war is going on, a great many of the 
people permanently here on the ground are turning their 
gaze back home in order to discover just where they stand. 
I was in conversation the other day with two prominent 
members of the House of Elders, of whom one holds the 
long-distance record for debate in that House after speaking 
sixty-two consecutive hours on no less than thirteen differ- 
ent subjects on two sandwiches of goat's cheese and a glass 
of milk. I inquired of these statesmen how they would vote 
on the pending measure for the construction of 40,000 aero- 
planes. 



CONGESTED WAR WORKERS 103 

" Public opinion in my province is solid for the aero- 
planes," said the long-distance Elder. " I have here no less 
than 4,400 telegrams declaring that the aeroplanes are es- 
sential to victory." 

" On the other hand," said the second Elder, " I have 
here 6,100 telegrams insisting that I vote against the aero- 
planes and in favor of the wooden submarine-chasers." 

" That is extraordinary unanimity in both cases," I re- 
marked. 

" Unanimity isn't the word," said the first Elder. " All 
my 4,400 telegrams agree in denouncing what they call 
' fatal delay on a vital issue.' Now how did they all happen 
to think of that phrase? " 

" Every one of my 6,100 telegrams," said the second 
Elder, " addressed me as Hassan ben Ali instead of Abu ben 
Ali, which is my right name. Now how did they all hap- 
pen to make the same error? " 

" Public opinion is a wondrous thing," I said. 

" It is," sighed the Elders. But this is beside the point. 

It is this second Elder, by the way, who has been a pro- 
lific source for most of the first-hand information that goes 
out of Bagdad. Whenever old Abu in the course of his mis- 
cellaneous reading happens to stumble across something that 
strikes his fancy he reads it into the House Record. There- 
by it becomes Government information and is extensively 
quoted. It may be a bit of homely poetry or a recipe for 
preserving figs or a description of sunset on the ruins of 
Nineveh; it all goes in. 

Now, as the Caliph and I were making our descent from 



104 SINBAD 

tbe Tower of Abu Bekr, out of the dusk there leaped a fig- 
ure in a bathing-suit with a notebook, for it is warm in 
Bagdad. 

" Enlightened One," came a voice from the bathing-suit, 
"how and when will the war end? " 

The Caliph answered gravely: 

" Son, the war will end through starvation in about three 
months, if special correspondents continue to flock into Bag- 
dad at the present rate. The famine-stricken natives of this 
city will rise and compel me to make peace on the enemy's 
terms." 



STORY OF WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 

AYESHA and her husband did not go into apartments, 
after all. At the last moment she decided that by 
going to live with her father in the palace there would be 
that many taxi fares saved, which she would give to the 
Red Crescent. The royal residence being heavily congested 
with an overflow of bureaus and departments from the Army 
and Navy Building, it seemed at first as if no adequate 
quarters could be obtained for the visitors. His Majesty 
was finally compelled to issue an edict abolishing the Bureau 
of Analytical Geometry, with the result that the young 
Khan and his wife were soon comfortably installed, and the 
war went on, if anything, a little better than ever. 

Thither his Majesty, accompanied by the present writer, 
was in the habit of repairing at odd hours for a quiet chat 
with his son-in-law, of whom he was exceeding fond. Aye- 
sha we saw rarely. The second day after her arrival in Bag- 
dad she joined the local branch of the National Mesopo- 
tamian Union for the Enactment of Direct, Equal, Single, 
Proportional, and Compulsory Suffrage by Imperial Legis- 
lation (briefly known as the N. M. U. E. D. E. S. P. C. S. 
I. L.). The next day she began a campaign for the revi- 
sion of the by-laws and simultaneously took the first steps 
towards organizing a Relief Bazaar. After that she discov- 
ered that she must have some new clothes. 

We entered one afternoon, the Caliph and I, the apart- 

i°5 



106 SINBAD 

ments of the visitors from Turkestan and found the young 
Khan on a divan in the darkest corner of the room with his 
head in his hands. 

" The peace of the Prophet with you, oh, Hassan," said 
the Caliph. " Is it the war that troubles your spirits, or are 
you lonely for Ayesha? " 

The young Khan put his finger to his lips and pointed to 
the curtains that covered the doorway, but before he could 
speak Ayesha's voice came from behind the curtains: " Is 
^hat you, papa? " 

" Even so, daughter," replied the Caliph. 

" Don't go before I see you," she said. " I will be through 
in a moment." 

A wan smile lit up the countenance of the young Khan 
as he rose to surrender his seat to the royal visitor. 

" The dressmaker is in there, and they are trying on 
things," he said. " She came at high noon. It is now half 
an hour to sunset." 

The Caliph lifted the stem of the narghili to his mouth, 
inhaled once or twice, and shook his head in compassion. 

" I know, son, I know," he said. " I, too, suffered until 
I married my seventh wife. Now I order from Paris in car 
lots, and it doesn't worry me in the least." 

" Know you what, oh, One among Fathers-in-Law," said 
the young Khan. "I am no longer puzzled by the ques- 
tion whether woman can ever take up the hardships of 
actual warfare. I am convinced that any woman in Bag- 
dad can stand up in a trench forty-eight hours at a stretch, 
provided she can have another woman kneeling before her 
with a mouthful of pins." 



WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 107 

" Now, by the beard of the Chairman of the Rivers and 
Harbors Committee, you have spoken the truth, Hassan," 
said the Caliph. " Only you must not take it so hard. 
Ayesha will grow older and you will grow wiser and the 
thing will adjust itself." 

"I am not complaining; I am merely puzzled," said the 
young Khan. " This business of women and clothes is not 
a frivolity, seeing that they give of their strength and their 
nerves to it; and yet there are knitting-bags." 

" Knitting-bags? " I queried. 

" To carry sweaters and socks which you are knitting for 
the soldiers. Give ear, oh Sinbad. This is from the fash- 
ion page of the Bagdad Buzzer." And he read: 

" ' There are knitting-bags of the most expensive of ma- 
terials. A black satin one has a medallion of blue Chinese 
embroidery appliqued conspicuously on its side. One of 
black and gold brocade has its rings wound with gold galloon 
and is adorned with tassels of gold. A silk one is made from 
a Poiret print colored the gayest of red and blue and white. 
There are bags of lace and ribbon as accompaniments for 
evening and boudoir gowns. There are also tailored ones 
of velvet and duvetyn; also those with bright silver and 
enameled tops for knitting-needles.' Now, what does that 
sound like to you? " 

" It sounds," I said, " like a possible quotation from a 
speech on the Army Appropriation bill." 

But the young Khan had no ears for me. 

" Imagine," he said bitterly, but in a low voice, with one 
eye on the curtains, " what would happen to democracy 
and self-determination if there wasn't an embroidered 



io8 SINBAD 

blue Chinese medallion appliqued on the side. Imagine one 
of our Mesopotamian boys going over the top without a 
sweater from a velvet and duvetyn knitting-bag. Imagine 
what would happen to open diplomacy if Ayesha were 
to start out for the opera and forget her ribbon and lace 
knitting-bag with a pair of half-finished socks in it. Why 
is it, Father-in-Law? Why must Ayesha, with youth, ro- 
mance, courage, humor, and vision, be unable to face life 
without gold galloon and an enameled top? " 

The Caliph, continuing to puff at his pipe and stare 
straight ahead without evincing a desire to speak, I ventured 
to remark: " I have read, oh Excellent Prince, that among 
the birds it is the other way about; for it is the male who 
is adorned with the gayest of plumage, while the female 
wears the sober garb. I have been through the School of 
Journalism, and I know my entomology." 

But the young Khan spoke dryly: " I haven't noticed 
much change in bird fashions for several thousand years; 
have you? The patterns seem to be pretty constant." 

" Nevertheless," I said, nettled, I confess, by the young 
Khan's superior manner, " the male instinct for gay colors 
persists. Even now I will confess — " 

" Now, don't tell me, Sinbad, that you have a weakness 
in that direction," said the Caliph, with a peculiar glint in 
his eye. 

" Illustrious One," I said, " at all times the sight of a 
red necktie in a bazaar window threatens to sweep me from 
my moral foundations." 

" I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Sinbad," said the 
young Khan with right royal kindliness, " but the point I 



WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 109 

have been trying to make is not that women's clothes are 
so frivolously gay, but that they are so frivolously change- 
able. We men get used to our clothes and like them. 
When they get used to their clothes, it means that they 
can't stand them any longer, but must have new ones im- 
mediately. See now what they lose in life — the ineffable 
companionship of an old turban which becomes like a part 
of you, a worn girdle whose every thread calls you brother, 
the solace of an old pair of slippers. I have noticed that 
as soon as I think Ayesha is beginning to look comfortable 
in one of her gowns, she calls it dowdy. Why? " 

" Now that your Excellency speaks of it," I said, " it is 
my opinion that the reason is the persistence of polygamous 
instincts in women." 

They both stared at me, and I should have been unspeak- 
ably grateful if at that moment the Principal Censor had 
appeared through the ceiling and suppressed me. But it 
was too late to withdraw. 

" What I mean is the need for change, renewal, trans- 
ferred self-expression, Freud- Jung, you know, and that sort 
of thing," I stammered. 

The Caliph whistled. 

" You are a biologist, Sinbad," he said. But it was Aye- 
sha who really cleared up the matter for us as soon as she 
came in. 



STORY OF WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 

(Continued) 

IT was well on towards the hour of the evening prayer 
when the Princess Ayesha, having dismissed her dress- 
maker, joined us in the great hall. To her the Caliph, 
fondly drawing her to himself, expounded in a few well- 
chosen words the subject of our discourse. 

" Why is it, daughter," he said, " that this sudden onset 
called Style seizes at regular intervals upon all the women 
in my realm and causes them to array themselves in gar- 
ments of exactly the same tint cut on precisely the same 
lines? " 

" It is very simple, papa," said Ayesha. " It is because 
we are trying to make the world safe for democracy." And 
as the three of us gazed at her without comprehending, 
" Hassan, dear," she said, " I have a splitting headache. 
Couldn't we have some coffee? " 

It was some time before, in response to the young Khan's 
vigorous handclap, the serving-maid appeared, her agile 
fingers whirling a pair of knitting-needles through the in- 
tricate web of a soldier's mitten even while she prostrated 
herself and waited for orders. But when the coffee was 
brought the Commander of the Faithful lifted the tiny 
square of sugar from his saucer and looked inquiringly at his 
daughter. 

no 



WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 1 1 1 

" Your hospitality is meager, Ayesha," he said. 

" That is as much as the Sugar and Pomegranate Jam Ad- 
ministrator will allow to a cup, papa," she replied. 

" But surely in exceptional cases? " 

" It is for us to set the example. Hassan takes his coffee 
straight," she explained as she helped herself to her hus- 
band's bit of sugar, which, after the Oriental fashion, she 
nibbled at as she sipped. 

" You were speaking about democracy," said the young 
Prince, who, like his celebrated ancestor, Genghis Khan, 
would never drop a topic until he had exhausted it. 

" It is quite simple," said Ayesha, dipping into a five- 
pound bonbon box which she drew from beneath the cush- 
ions of the divan. " When all of us simultaneously go in 
for blue, or cerise, or mustard, this is what happens. You 
men happen to see a pretty face in blue, or cerise, or mus- 
tard " — and here she addressed herself to me, to my infinite 
embarrassment — " and thereafter when you see a blue or 
cerise or mustard you at once assume a pretty face; and 
closer observation fails to undeceive you. This is very for- 
tunate for the homely girl. For how many men are there, 
oh Sinbad, who can use their eyes for themselves? " 

" Highness," I replied, " before I was a foreign corre- 
spondent I was a war expert, and before that I frequently 
helped out on the Woman's Page, and it is even as you 
say." 

" Don't you see, then? " said Ayesha, quite carried away 
by the sweep of her own argument. " The sight of the first 
attractive young woman in a blue gown establishes in the 
masculine mind a permanent blue-pretty association complex 



ii2 SINBAD 

as that dear infidel writer Wullahim Jamis would say in 
his book on the ' Principles of Psychology/ Volume I." 

The Caliph regarded her sternly. 

" How do such unknown prints come into your hands, 
daughter? " 

" We studied him in school at Ispahan, papa. He is quite 
safe. Ask Sinbad; it's one of his own countrymen." 

" Is that the truth? " asked the Caliph. 

" It is true, Fountain Head of Felicity," I said. " At 
home we call him James. There were three brothers — Wil- 
liam, Henry and Jesse." 

" But you know everything, Sinbad," cried the young 
Khan with unaffected admiration. 

" I do, Excellent One," I replied with proper humility. 
" Only I know it in spots." 

" At any rate, papa, you see what I mean," said Ayesha 
with just a shade of impatience. " Style is democratic be- 
cause it means all sharing alike. That is why in the coun- 
tries of the West the fashions are set by the women of the 
theater, who are all exceptionally beautiful. The idea of 
beauty becomes attached to a certain color or a certain 
cut, and we are all of us the better off for that. All for 
one and one for all, I say." 

It may be that the Commander of the Faithful was in ill 
humor for want of his usual quantity of sugar with his 
coffee, but he frowned into his beard and muttered: " Now 
I would give up much, aye, even the Chief Controller of 
Camel Hides and Bismuth, to know whence you draw your 
rich store of information concerning the manners of the 
West." 



WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 113 

" I remember what I learned at school, papa," she said. 
" And I correspond regularly with El Onorina Essmit, of 
Pittsburgh, whose husband was Ambassador here before I 
married. Hassan reads all her letters." 

" It is so," said Hassan gravely. " The lady El Onorina 
begins her letter on the last page, continues it on the second, 
jumps to the first page, and ends on the third. Perhaps 
that may account for Ayesha's somewhat curious impres- 
sions of the customs of the infidel Westerners." 

But the Caliph would not be appeased, and, as he puffed 
at the water-pipe in resentful silence, the young Khan, who 
had been waiting his opportunity, addressed himself to 
Ayesha. 

" I understand why all of you should wear blue or mus- 
tard at the same time," he said. " That is democracy, as 
you say. But why do you change from blue to mustard 
and back again with such painful rapidity? " 

" Because as soon as one does it everybody else does it," 
she said. 

" Why does the first one do it? " 

" If she didn't when everybody else did, she'd only be 
making herself conspicuous," said Ayesha. 

The young Khan ran his palm over his forehead and, 
picking up his coffee, hitherto untouched, drained it at a 
gulp. 

" Why not wear a uniform, then, like our troops? " he 
said. " Then you all start even and so remain." 

" Hassan, dear," she said patiently, " do you imagine we 
wear clothes as clothes? " 

" That I concede," said her husband thoughtfully. 



ii 4 SINBAD 

" When I get utterly sick of my old things and must have 
a new frock, it is because I simply must express my own 
individuality." 

Hassan had a worried look. 

" Let us get that straight," he said. " You call in Mus- 
tapha ibn Ali from the Paris Bazaar and pay him five thou- 
sand sequins and order him to express your own individual- 
ity? " 

" Hassan," she said, " I have saved more than enough on 
cereals and newspapers this year to pay for my entire ward- 
robe." 

The young Khan flushed and spoke out sharply. " You 
know that is not what I meant," he insisted. " You say 
you put on something in cerise to express yourself." 

" Yes," said Ayesha, refusing to look in his direction. 

" And immediately ten thousand other women put on 
cerise to express themselves? " 

She nodded and picked up a magazine. 

" And it's democracy? " 

" That's what I said," she replied calmly. 

" And it's assertion of one's individuality? " persisted the 
unhappy young man. 

" It is," said Ayesha. 

" But how can there be two utterly different things at the 
same time? " he pleaded. 

" If I haven't made myself clear, I can't help it," said 
Ayesha, utterly absorbed in the interior decorating adver- 
tisements. At her side the Commander of the Faithful ad- 
dressed a warning cough in the direction of the hapless 



WHAT THE WOMEN WILL WEAR 115 

young Khan. But the latter leaned his aching forehead 
against the portieres and said: 

" That is reasoning like — " 

" Please don't say like a woman," said Ayesha. " I have 
heard debates in the House of Elders." 

" If only I could understand," moaned the young Khan. 
" Do you, Father-in-law? " 

" Son-in-law," said the Caliph gravely, " try some more 
coffee." 



STORY OF THE CALIPH AND THE BURNT 
CAKES 

ON the first Thursday after the second Tuesday in the 
moon of Muharran the Commander of the Faithful 
with the Principal Censor took train from the capital for the 
new links thirty miles up the river in order to test out the 
short fourteenth, which for some months has been the talk 
of the town. 

The skies were threatening when his Majesty departed 
and it was drizzling when they teed off, but the Caliph 
would not listen to reason. They were at the other end of 
the links from the clubhouse when the storm broke, and by 
the time they had presented themselves for shelter at the 
door of a herdsman's cottage, for which they ran with all 
speed, discarding their clubs on the way, the two were 
drenched to the skin. 

In the hut they found a middle-aged woman of sharp 
aspect, who was baking millet cakes on the open hearth. 
To their request for permission to dry their clothes before 
the fire, she demurred at first. Then, softening somewhat 
to their pitiable state, she consented to give them hospitality 
on condition that they keep a careful eye on the millet 
cakes while she went outside to look after the cattle in the 
shed. When she returned after half an hour, the Caliph had 
almost succeeded in convincing the Principal Censor that 
par four on the long second hole was an outrageous imposi- 

116 



THE BURNT CAKES 117 

tion on the average player who does not go in for swatting 
the ball, and the cakes were burned to a coal. 

" Now, may Allah deliver me from ever setting eyes again 
on so clumsy a pair of louts," cried the middle-aged woman. 
" Out with the two of you, I say." But as they meekly 
rose to depart, she slackened somewhat in her anger 
and commanded them to stay till the storm was over, seeing 
that the damage was done. " Only I wonder," she com- 
plained, " what sort of men you be and what is your occupa- 
tion that you cannot be trusted with a panful of cakes on 
the ashes. I pity the Caliph, if with the help of such as 
you he must wage and win a war. But if my son, Selim, 
were here to help with the cattle I should not be compelled 
to leave my good bread in the care of footless strangers." 

" And where is your son? " asked his Majesty. 

" They have taken him, of course," she said, her lips 
trembling a little. " And who knows if I shall ever see him 
again? " 

" Pray to Allah, mother, and Selim will come back td 
you." 

She sat down on the floor and rocked to and fro, speak- 
ing rather to herself than to the strangers. " Pray to 
Allah? " she said bitterly. " But what of the men in Bag- 
dad who have taken my son? What will they do with 
him? " 

" They, too, are trying to give their best, mother," said 
the Caliph. 

" Their best," she cried bitterly. " They are but men, 
And if they fail, if they fall asleep over the fire as you two 
have done, what will happen to my son? " 



n8 SINBAD 

" Old woman," said the Principal Censor, " in speaking 
thus of his Majesty's Government, you violate Article XVI, 
Section 23, Paragraph 13 — " 

" Be quiet, P. C," said the Caliph, and then to the mid- 
dle-aged woman: " You speak truth, mother. I, too, have 
puzzled over this sad business of governing men, which is but 
a business in which mistakes are paid for in men's happiness 
qnd men's lives. But what is the way out of it? " 

" Let the rulers fight their own battles," cried the old 
woman. 

" In the early days we used to do that," said the Com- 
mander of the Faithful. " In those days the kings were 
heroes and a nation's fate might be left to the strength of 
their stout right arm. Would you have the fate of Meso- 
potamia now decided by the Caliph in single combat? I 
have heard — " 

" I, too, have heard," said the woman with a sniff of con- 
tempt. " An elderly gentleman, soft with feeding and the 
harem. A noble warrior, to be sure. My Selim would make 
two bites of him." 

" Woman," cried the Principal Censor, " by virtue of 
Postal Order Number 3456, you are — " 

" Keep your tunic on, P. C," said the Caliph, and to the 
middle-aged woman: 

" So you see, mother. And how did Selim go? " 

" He went gladly," she said, staring into the fire. " But 
that is how they always go, whether to war or to another 
woman; and we are left." And then, quite illogically, after 
the manner of women: "What cause for quarrel have I 
with the people of Madagascar? What right has the Caliph 



THE BURNT CAKES 119 

to make war for me? Do you know what? There is some 
woman in Madagascar whose son has been taken from her, 
even as Selim. I will search her out, and make a separate 
peace with her for our two sons. Why not? " 

" That idea has been anticipated, old woman," said the 
Principal Censor, " by an ancient infidel poet named Aris- 
tophanes, who represents a citizen of Athens, then at war 
with Sparta — " * 

" Don't be a pedant, P. C," said the Caliph, and then to 
the middle-aged woman: " How will you seek out that 
woman of Madagascar to make peace with her? Will you 
leave your kine to look after themselves and travel across 
the seas? " 

" What is the Government at Bagdad for? " she cried. 

" So it's the people at Bagdad, again," said the Caliph 
gently. " They are not much, but they are the best way 
we know." 

He fell silent. 

" There was once a ruler of a great people who waged a 
long war, in which many, many young men perished. The 
war was not of his seeking. He was an infidel. His name 
was Lincoln. And in his heart there was never-ceasing pain 
for these men whom he sent to their death." 

" For that, may Allah be kind to his unbelieving soul in 
the darkness," said the woman. 

" And yet that is not a bad idea of yours, of fighting it 
out in single combat," said the Caliph, half to himself. 
" When this war is over, mother, we are going to take a 
step in that direction. We will agree with the other nations 
to cut down our armies by two-thirds. Instead of taking 



120 SINBAD 

ten young men from your village we shall take three. Some 
day, perhaps, we shall take only one. Who knows? There 
will come a time when no one will be taken from the crops 
and the cattle." 

"That is all very well," she complained; "but who will 
pay me for the burnt cakes? " 



STORY OF THE TWO WEARY TRAFFICKERS 

"T^TOW as the Caliph, accompanied by the faithful Mes- 
XAI rour and the present writer, was making his nightly 
round through the anti-alien zone along the river, his Maj- 
esty came near stumbling over the forms of two men seated 
in the dark on the steps of a cold-storage warehouse; of 
whom the one, with his head between his knees, moaned 
piteously in a hard, dry tone, while the other with the aid 
of an electric pocket torch bent over a heavy volume that 
lay open on his lap. 

Addressing himself to the latter, " What book is this," 
said the Caliph, " that holds you thus spellbound, oh 
stranger, in such unacademic surroundings? " 

The literary enthusiast looked at us with an eye in which 
intelligence and profound melancholy contended for mas- 
tery. 

" Inquisitive Pedestrians," he said, " I am reading the 
Variorum Edition of the Dialogues of Plato in the original 
Greek; this in the strictest confidence." 

" But why at this hour, and in this recondite place? " 
cried his Majesty. 

The stranger made no attempt to conceal his astonish- 
ment. 

" Because public opinion will not tolerate my reading 
anything else than the Glad Books," he said. 

" And who are you, then? " demanded his Majesty. 



122 SINBAD 

"lama Weary Trafficker," said the stranger; whereat 
the Commander of the Faithful, turning to the present 
writer, cried, " Now, this is a new one to me! What do you 
make of it, Sinbad? " 

" Majesty," I replied, " it occurs to me that in my own 
country there is a class of men known as the Tired Business 
Men; it may be — " 

" And who are these Tired Business Men? " queried the 
stranger eagerly. 

" They are the people who are responsible for pretty 
nearly everything that is amiss with American literature 
and the drama," I said. 

" That's me, all right," cried the stranger, letting the 
book fall to the ground and smiting his breast with both his 
hands. " As I said, the Weary Trafficker." 

" And what makes you weary, unhappy stranger? " said 
the Caliph. 

" Everybody," he replied. " The reviewers and the critics 
and the editorial writers; the organizers of the Mesopo- 
tamian Folk Drama and Dance League; the college pro- 
fessors who say that I stand in the way of a new Mesopo- 
tamian Art; and the Society for Safeguarding the Morals 
of Asia Minor. Whereas the fact is that I hate the crook 
drama and I prefer Plato to bed-room farce." 

" Then why not say so? " growled Mesrour, who had 
picked up the Greek volume and was reading it backward. 

" In the first place," said the Weary Trafficker, " no one 
would believe me, and if they caught me reading Plato 
they would send for the Bank Examiner to go over my 
accounts. In the second place, it would deprive all these 



THE TWO WEARY TRAFFICKERS 123 

critics, professors, reviewers, editorial writers, and Drama 
League organizers of a principal source of income, and I 
shouldn't dream of doing that with food prices what they 
are." 

" Then who is responsible for the crook drama? " said 
the Caliph. 

" I am not certain," sobbed the stranger, " but I suspect 
it must be my wife." 

" She is also Weary? " asked the Caliph. 

" Alas, no," said the stranger. " Fatima is indefatigable. 
For when I come home at night and express my intention to 
put on carpet slippers and read Plato for the rest of the 
evening she insists that we go to the theater. But on our 
way home she turns to me and says, ' That is the kind of 
drama you men acclaim and support! ' Always, oh stranger, 
it is the man who pays," and he rocked back and forth in 
his woe. 

" It is hard," said the Caliph. 

" Even so," replied the stranger. Then, brightening un- 
der our sympathy: " Yet am I not so unfortunate as this, 
my neighbor." 

He put his arm tenderly around the shoulders of his com- 
panion, who had not budged from his semi-recumbent posi- 
tion, and lifted him so as to let our gaze fall upon his coun- 
tenance, from which, alas, the light of reason had long 
since fled. The man stared at us, and from between his 
lips poured forth an idiot gabble which made even sturdy 
Mesrour turn away and feel in the folds of his turban for 
his handkerchief. 

" This, too, is a Weary Trafficker? " I asked, 



I2 4 SINBAD 

" More than weary," said the first stranger. " One of 
the leading members of our local Chamber of Commerce, 
his mind has collapsed utterly under the strain of war 
mathematics. Give ear." 

I pulled forth my note book and we all leaned forward 
to catch the drift of that mumbled soliloquy. Subject to 
the interposition of the Censor, this is what we heard: 

" If in the year 191 6 I was a super-normal married man 
with two children under the age of eighteen collected at the 
source and reciprocally convertible into non-taxable Gov- 
ernment securities — " 

The Caliph turned a horrified, questioning face to the 
first stranger. The latter made a brave attempt to smile 
and failed. 

" He is trying to figure out his income-tax under the new 
schedules," he said. 

The unhappy mental wreck at his side looked up at the 
sound of the familiar word, laughed, nodded at us in a 
friendly manner that made the chills run down my back, 
and said: 

" Subtracting 2 per cent, of all sums above 20,000 sequins 
from the date of the battle of Waterloo, and adding all ac- 
crued debts, personal and realty, to the extra thirteen days 
of the Russian calendar for the years 19 16 and 191 7, in 
parallel columns, the result in red ink for all aged and in- 
firm dependents — " 

" This is awful," said the Caliph. " Is there no hope at 
all? " 

" We have tried pretty nearly everything," said the first 
stranger. " At my instance he has repeatedly tried to give 



THE TWO WEARY TRAFFICKERS 125 

away his entire fortune above 2,000 sequins — for he is a 
married man; but you know what friends are in the hour 
of need. Men who have always been ready to borrow from 
him on the slightest provocation have thrown his deed of 
gift back in his face or else pleaded duty to their family." 

" Then all is lost? " I asked. 

The other nodded. " The malady is progressive. It is 
not only the income tax now. Listen." 

We bent forward and I wrote down, verbatim: 

" If 7 1-3 cents be added to a 60 per cent, increase in the 
cost of feed within a 200-mile pasteurized radius for Certi- 
fied Grade B— " 

" The milk rates," said the first stranger. " He has been 
reading the dairy advertisements." 

" Now, by the beard of the Commissioner of Water, Gas 
and Electricity," cried Mesrour, " it were best to put this 
sad wretch out of his misery at once," and he drew his 
sword. 

But the first stranger cried out: 

" In the name of Allah, desist. He has a young daugh- 
ter about to be married happily. Would you compel her to 
figure out the special inheritance tax? " 



STORY OF SCHEHERAZADE'S SISTERS 

TIME hung heavy on the Princess Ayesha's hands. Her 
husband, the young Hassan Khan, was engaged in 
daily consultations with the Ministry of High and Low 
Finance concerning the hundred million sequin loan, non- 
repayable and at six per cent, deferred interest. His Maj- 
esty, her father, was absorbed in problems of naval strategy. 
These, he said, might best be studied from a hill in close 
proximity to the golf links. The women of Bagdad were 
busy with their hospital work and, consequently, a truce had 
been called in the sex war. Under these circumstances, the 
Princess Ayesha was pleased to summon me quite frequently 
into her presence and to while away the time by question- 
ing me in regard to the life and civilization of my native 
land. 

I found her on one occasion in the company of the Prin- 
cipal Censor, who had been detailing to her the progress of 
the war on land. As he omitted the date and place of every 
engagement together with the number of forces on either 
side and who won, Ayesha was in the habit of saying that 
she found the Principal Censor delightfully restful. 

Even as I entered, he rose to take his departure. 

" Must you go, Hajji Ali? " said Ayesha, yawning 
slightly. 

" Your Imminence," said the Principal Censor, glancing 
at his wrist watch, " it is late. If you will divide the mean 

126 



SCHEHERAZADE'S SISTERS 127 

annual rainfall in Mesopotamia by the average number of 
children among the upper middle class families of Bagdad 
you will have a very fair idea of what time it is." 

He crawled out of the room backward and in a zig-zag 
fashion; the former out of deference to his royal mistress 
and the latter for the sake of withholding all information 
of his movements from the enemy. 

The Princess was exceptionally gracious that afternoon 
and bade me rise after my second full-length prostration, 
which I understand is a low record for journalists in Bag- 
dad. 

" Tell me about the position of women in your own coun- 
try, Sinbad," said the Princess quite suddenly. That was 
Ayesha's way. 

" Scintillating One," I said, " I am a plain newspaper 
man. I have chronicled marriages and separations, sacri- 
fices and scandals, tragedies and farces, millionaires' wives 
and shirtwaist workers, grandmothers and flappers ; but what 
do I know about women? " 

Ayesha was visibly disappointed. 

" I was so anxious to know how the status of women in 
Turkestan and Bagdad compared with your own," she 
said. 

" Select One," I said, " I did not listen well. Concern- 
ing women I know nothing. Concerning the Position of 
Woman I can speak with authority. Deign but to ask." 

" How do you treat your women, Sinbad? " she said. 

" With the utmost deference and consideration," I said. 
" We always remove our hats when addressing a lady. We 
invariably rise to our feet when a woman enters the room. 



Z28 SINBAD 

The man who will hesitate to give up his seat to a woman 
in a public conveyance is a rare exception. Above all, it is 
quite unheard of that any statement uttered by a woman 
should be challenged by one of the opposite sex on any 
ground." 

" Do you think that is being kind to them? " said Aye- 
sha with a touch of asperity. 

" Your Highness," I said, " it is innate respect. When a 
woman in my country confuses Kamchatka with Cape- 
town we bow to her superior intuition." 

" Do they frequently make such mistakes? " said Ayesha. 

" Not at all, your Highness," I said. " It is a fact that 
the intellectual life of our country outside of the colleges 
is almost entirely carried on by our women. We of the 
other sex content ourselves with a simple stipulation. We 
insist that the standards of culture maintained by our wives 
and daughters shall be higher than we, the men, can ever 
hope to attain. This is popularly known as the Double 
Standard. Custom requires that the best in art, literature 
and music shall be reserved for the women. The men try 
to get along with what is merely amusing." 

"Always? " said Ayesha, frowning. 

" Not always, Incontestable One," I said. " Men will 
sometimes be discovered reading a fine novel or attending a 
play of superior merit. The reason is probably that it is 
the kind of book or play that every women ought to make 
her husband read or see. Sometimes men will go to the 
play on their own initiative and by themselves. They do 
this in order to find out whether the play is a safe one for 
them to take their fiancees to." 



SCHEHERAZADE'S SISTERS 129 

" I call that hateful," said Ayesha. 

" You have spoken, Highness," I said. " Nevertheless 
the custom is not so cruel as would appear at first sight. 
For if the man should report that the play in question is 
not quite the thing, they go to see it anyhow." 

" So it gets down to this," said Ayesha. " You men do 
very little for the promotion of culture in America." 

" Incredible One," I said, " just a moment. We do our 
share. You may put it this way. The principal contribu- 
tion of my sex to the higher life among us is in the role of 
escort. Custom is sharply opposed to any woman being 
seen on the streets or in any public conveyance after night- 
fall without a male companion. That is why the theater, 
which functions chiefly at night, is the one form of art in 
which men and women participate on something like an 
equal numerical basis. But it is different with music which 
is largely an afternoon art. The same is true of picture gal- 
leries. It is emphatically the case with literature, which 
obviously can be pursued at home and without an escort. 
Here the field is virtually preempted by women readers." 

At this point the young Hassan Khan entered. He 
greeted me after his usual kindly fashion, though, as he 
told us, he had had a hard morning of it with the Minister 
of High and Low Finance. The Minister of Finance in- 
sisted that the hundred million sequin loan should be non- 
repayable in forty-two years and the young Khan held out 
for twenty-one years. They finally agreed that no pay- 
ments on the loan should be made for thirty years, after 
which it would automatically lapse. 

Ayesha thereupon asked me if I had ever noticed the ex- 



130 SINBAD 

ceptionally fine arabesques on the wall behind me. And 
when I had sufficiently admired the wondrous art of the 
unknown master craftsman, Ayesha and Hassan were sit- 
ting close together on the couch and they were holding 
hands. 

" Sinbad has been telling me about the women in his 
country," said Ayesha. " That is where you should have 
gone, Hassan, for a really intelligent wife." 

" I prefer them the other way," said Hassan, who, for a 
monarch, was not devoid of humor. 

For a moment Ayesha looked at Hassan as if she were 
about to call my attention to some exquisite specimens of 
stained glass just behind me. But she changed her mind 
and recalled that shortly before the war she had met a de- 
lightful little American woman, a school-teacher from Kan- 
sas. Ayesha asked if we had many women teachers in the 
West. 

" Highness," I said, " in the absence of the Principal 
Censor there may be no harm in mentioning that we have 
nearly half a million of them." 

" But why women? " said Hassan. 

" Pride of the Oxus," I replied, " education may have one 
of two objects. It may be, in the first place, a preparation 
for business. That is why we entrust the care of our chil- 
dren to young women who are thoroughly unacquainted with 
the spirit and processes of modern industry and commerce. 
Or else the purpose of education is to prepare one not for 
making a living but for life, as Confucius remarked in the 
year 576 B. C. Now the best way to prepare a child for 
1 life is to hand it over to a woman of good character who 



SCHEHERAZADE'S SISTERS 131 

has graduated from Normal School at the age of eighteen 
and who, after thirty years of service, has attained an aver- 
age annual salary of six hundred and fifty dollars, provided 
she has not minimized her knowledge of life by getting mar- 
ried." 

" The pay strikes me as somewhat meager," said Hassan. 

" Excellency," I said, " the deep seated reverence for 
women which is one of the dominant traits of our people 
finds striking expression in the underpayment of women 
teachers. In general it is recognized that the higher moral 
status which woman occupies among us, entitles her to less 
pay for an equal amount of work. We believe concerning 
women in all gainful occupations that the more they are 
paid the more they spend on crepe shirtwaists and silk 
stockings. That is why millions of women in my country 
are rigorously safeguarded against the temptations which 
accrue with an adequate salary." 

Hassan was undeniably about to express his agreement 
with that point of view, but he caught the frown on Aye- 
sha's face, coughed, cleared his throat, and said, " I call it 
disgusting." 

The smile Ayesha gave him was like the first ray of the 
morning sun over the pinnacles of the Koko-Nor. 

" It's more than disgusting," said Hassan. " It's a 
blanked outrage." 

" Descendant of the Major Prophets," I said, " you have 
spoken. The privileged position occupied by the women of 
my country is even now being seriously menaced. Oddly 
enough, the danger comes from the women themselves. For 
a good many years they have been trying hard to descend 



132 SINBAD 

from their lofty position to a common level with their men. 
The case has been summed up by one of our most celebrated 
professors of Contemporary Civilization who now holds a 
high place on the Shipping Board. He points out that so- 
cial agitation during the last twenty-five years in my coun- 
try is in large measure the result of a determined effort on 
the part of our women to climb down from their pedestal 
and of an equally determined counter-effort by a large sec- 
tion of the male population to shoo them back. Already 
our women have been degraded to complete political equal- 
ity with their men. Equal pay agitation threatens to re- 
duce them to economic equality. Beyond that lie vast and 
menacing possibilities, such as the cigarette habit. As your 
great leader, Hammurabi, remarked in the year 3452 B. C, 
it is a situation to make the judicious grieve." 

" Sticks! " said Ayesha, with a contempt that Hassan 
evidently thought became her admirably, for he asked me if 
that was not some one scratching for admittance at the cloth- 
of-gold curtain behind me. I looked, but there was no one 
there. 



STORY OF SCHEHERAZADE'S SISTERS (Continued) 

THE reader may have noticed that I told the Princess 
Ayesha naught concerning the political status of the 
women in my own country. The reason was that in respect 
to politics there is no difference between Mesopotamia and 
the United States. This will appear from the few remarks 
here appended. 

The women of Mesopotamia as a class are still in very 
much the same condition prescribed for them by the holy 
Koran and the Philadelphia Inquirer. That is to say, 
woman occupies the position of inferiority imposed upon 
her by the laws of nature until such a time as she learns 
stenography and typewriting and alters the laws of nature. 

The activities and preoccupations of the women of this 
country are confined to the bearing and nursing of chil- 
dren, cultivating the millet fields, feeding the camels, build- 
ing houses, hauling canal-boats, trafficking in the bazaars, 
pleading in the courts, prescribing for the sick, writing for 
the screen drama, working in the munition mills, canvass- 
ing for de luxe editions, climbing mountains, extracting 
teeth, organizing clubs and running for office in them, drill- 
ing for home defense with spear and buckler, piloting ferry- 
boats, selling stock in Ararat Copper, and the like. There 
is little doubt that in a few years there will not be a single 
trade or profession in which the women of Mesopotamia will 
not be inferior to the men. 

There are, to be sure, some over-bold females in Bagdad, 
most of them young and fluent orators, who have chosen 



i 3 4 SINBAD 

to speak of these things as a sign of woman's progress. The 
obvious reply to this was made by the editor of the Bag- 
dad Barnacle. He pointed out that the very fact of her 
making progress argued woman's inferiority. There is no 
moving forward unless you are behind. And he contrasted 
the restlessness and so called " progress " of the women of 
Mesopotamia with the inclination among the other sex to 
stand pat, as the Koran puts it, or even to go back per- 
ceptibly. 

Nevertheless it happened that the women of Mesopo- 
tamia, obsessed with the idea that they were progressing, 
began to demand a voice in the various councils and con- 
gregations that make the laws. As soon as these laws are 
enacted the Supreme Tribunals usually annul them. When 
the Cadis declare a law void, there is a great deal of in- 
dignation among the populace. But when the Cadis ap- 
prove a law, the populace gives no more attention to it ex- 
cept when the time comes to repeal it. That is beside the 
point, however. The women of this country persisting in 
their clamor for a share in the making of the laws, the 
Bagdad Barnacle bethought itself of the fact that women are 
ill-adapted for political life because they are essentially 
creatures of emotion, whereas men are at all times swayed 
by reason. To show how reason operates in the average 
Mesopotamian male the Barnacle cited the following in- 
stances: 

Exhibit A. Abdullah Khan, grocer, who had it direct 
from Ibrahim Pasha, who had it direct from Mustapha ben 
Omar, that 200 submarines of the empire of Madagascar 
were captured on the first day of war and are now kept hid- 
den in the harbor of Basra. 

Exhibit B. Yussuf ben Nozeyr, broker, who maintains 



SCHEHERAZADE'S SISTERS 135 

that the Emperor of Madagascar can invade us with 1,000,- 
000 men in fifty ships, but that to invade Madagascar with 
100,000 men we need five hundred ships. 

Exhibit C. Hassan ben AH, mercerized silks, who insists 
that when we capture the enemy trenches we do so with 
trifling loss, but that when the enemy captures our trenches 
it is out of fear and despair and accompanied by enormous 
casualties and acute demoralization. 

Nevertheless the controversy raged, to the disturbance of 
the public peace and the great hurt of business, until it was 
decided to submit the quarrel to the venerable Cadi Sulei- 
man ibn Daoud. 

And he made the following test: He ordered before him 
the householder Zobeyr and his wife Fatima, and, address- 
ing himself to the man, he said, " Son, why should not Fa- 
tima vote? " 

" Because she is not my equal," said Zobeyr. 

" Very well," said Suleiman. " Shut your eyes tight, the 
two of you." 

They did so. 

" Now open your eyes." 

They did so. 

" Now look at the young woman in the booth across the 
street while I count four. Now close your eyes." 

They did so. 

" Now tell me, son, what manner of young woman was 
that in the booth across the street." 

" She wore a blue robe, or perhaps it was green," said 
Zobeyr. 

" Was she tall or short? " asked Suleiman. 

" I cannot tell," said Zobeyr. 

" Was she dark or fair? " 



136 SINBAD 

" I do not recall," said Zobeyr. 

Suleiman turned to Fatima. " Speak, daughter." 

" That girl in the booth," said Fatima, " is no better than 
she should be. Her hair is bleached. The hem of her robe 
on the left side is frayed. The latchet of her left sandal is 
loose. Her nails are ill-kept and she has an unpleasant cast 
in the right eye." 

" Son," said Suleiman to Zobeyr, " manifestly your wife 
is not your inferior in the power of observation." 

" That is an elementary sort of gift," grumbled Zobeyr. 

" Be it so," said Suleiman. " Tell me, son, when will 
the war with Madagascar be brought to a close? " 

" In six months," said Zobeyr. 

" How do you know? " 

" I saw it in the Barnacle," said Zobeyr. 

" Daughter," said Suleiman, " when will the war end? " 

"In two months, oh Cadi," said Fatima; "I feel it in 
my bones." 

" Son," said Suleiman, " your wife is not your inferior in 
judgment." 

" That is nothing," said Zobeyr. " There is really one 
mental quality that counts, the creative imagination, in 
which women are notably deficient." 

" Be it so," said Suleiman, and turned to Fatima. 
" Daughter, what do you see in this poor figure of a man, 
your husband? " 

She flashed back in white wrath: " Cadi, my husband 
is the comeliest man you will find in a day's journey and 
better to me than I deserve! " 

Suleiman cast one swift glance of appraisal at Zobeyr. 

" Daughter," he said, " you are not wanting in imagina- 
tion. Go out and vote." 



STORY OF THE CALIPH AND THE MODIFIED 
GARY SYSTEM 

HIS Majesty's extraordinary reversal of form on the 
links — he took 109 for the eighteen holes at the As- 
surbanipal Country Club last Monday — is not to be at- 
tributed to worry over the progress of the war, as the com- 
mon explanation goes, but to a far different matter, namely, 
the proposed reorganization of the school system. I have it 
on his Majesty's own authority that he lies awake nights 
pondering the relative merits of the play-study-work system, 
which is at present in force in the schools, and the work- 
play-study system, which has been brought forward as a 
substitute. " There is a vital difference there, of course, 
Sinbad," said the Caliph, " but at times it gets away from 
me." 

He told me that the question was brought up the other 
day by the Minister of Circulating Decimals, who is the 
head of the national system of education in Mesopotamia 
and who presented a petition humbly requesting that the 
title of his office be changed to Minister of Spontaneous 
Scroll Work and Plumbing. The petition was discussed in 
an extraordinary council consisting of his Majesty, the Min- 
ister of Circulating Decimals, the Chief Mullah, and the 
Principal Censor, of whom the last was present to pass 
judgment on the relation of the suggested changes in the 
curriculum to the efficient conduct of the war. 

137 



i 3 8 SINBAD 

" Luminence," said the Minister of Circulating Decimals, 
" our present system is antiquated. The study of decimals, 
inherited from the medieval schoolmen, has no bearing on 
the problems of democracy. Whereas Scroll Work and 
Plumbing go to the heart of modern life; they are the edu- 
cation of the future. I leave it to the Venerable Chief Mul- 
lah if that is not so." 

The Chief Mullah smiled benignly and nodded. The 
Chief Mullah weighs 270 in his stockings and radiates op- 
timism. People take one look at him and go out and buy 
100,000 sequins' worth of Mesopotamian Emancipation 
Bonds. 

" Son," he said, addressing the Minister of Circulating 
Decimals, " it is indeed the system of the future; everything 
is. It is also the system of the past; everything is. Cir- 
culating Decimals was the system of the future 1,200 years 
ago, 800 years ago, and 400 years ago. Scroll Work and 
Plumbing were the system of the future a thousand years 
ago, 600 years ago, and 200 years ago. That is the won- 
der and beauty of the child soul ; it will bear up under any- 
thing." 

" There is one thing," said the Caliph. " In formulating 
your school program, shouldn't there be some considera- 
tion for the welfare of the parents? Now, I was brought 
up under the old system. I studied the classics and learned 
to do my forty lines of the Mahabharata in an hour and a 
half with the aid of a dromedary " — this is the Mesopo- 
tamian school slang for a literal translation. " I memorized 
a number of names and dates. I could bound Kashmere 
and Nova Zembla, Very well. But to-day my little Yussuf 



THE MODIFIED GARY SYSTEM 139 

comes home from his experimental Modern School and says, 
' Dad, how do you make an aeroplane? ' I don't know how 
to make an aeroplane. I don't know how to light a fire when 
I am lost in the desert without matches. I can't tell north 
and south by the leaves of the palm tree. I don't know 
which way the seeds point in a pomegranate. I don't know 
how to build a phonograph ; all of which things my Yussuf 
asks me, to my own great discomfiture and an undeniable 
loss in my prestige as a father." 

" Your indulgence, Majesty," said the Minister of Cir- 
culating Decimals, " but you will not deny that aeroplanes 
are more in touch with the problems of modern life than a 
Sanskrit author whom you could at no time read with ease 
and whose language is now utterly strange to you? " 

" The question is not quite that, Abu Hassan," said the 
Caliph thoughtfully. " As a matter of fact my Yussuf 
doesn't know how to build a successful aeroplane without 
the aid of his professor of Scroll Work and Ballistics. So 
it seems to me that building an aeroplane which doesn't 
fly is not utterly different from reading a classic author 
whom you cannot translate. Yet I was happy in my time 
and Yussuf is a very happy child; for the reason that 
neither of us has been educated to anything useful. What 
say you, Venerable Father? " 

The Chief Mullah embraced the meeting with a smile. 
" Majesty," he said, " a camel driver became the founder 
of our faith, and pale students from the theological schools 
have conquered the world with the sword. Education will 
never keep a man down." 
" Glorious Integrity," said the Minister of Circulating 



i 4 o SINBAD 

Decimals, " when you would prepare a child for life you 
must — " 

" But that is just it," said the Commander of the Faith- 
ful. " I cannot help thinking that the purpose of elementary 
education is not to prepare a child for life, but to teach him 
how to read the newspapers. You disagree, P. C? " 

" I merely wished to remark, Munificence," said the Prin- 
cipal Censor, " that such preparation is no longer neces- 
sary. A proper supervision of the press reduces the art of 
newspaper reading to its very simplest terms." 

" That may be so," said the Caliph, " or again the con- 
trary may be true; and the more censors, the greater need 
for intelligence on the part of the newspaper public. But 
what I meant to say was this, Abu Hassan. The great need 
in a democracy is a public that can read the newspapers 
and so keep an eye on its rulers. You won't deny that this 
is really going to be the great problem of the future. Our 
forefathers had this in mind when they established our free 
public schools. They did not set out to prepare men for 
life, but to enable them to discuss politics around the warm- 
ing-pan in the bazaar, and so preserve our liberties." 

" Majesty," said the Minister of Circulating Decimals, 
with a touch of asperity, " they do not learn to read very 
well in the schools." 

" So much the better, I am tempted to say," replied the 
Caliph. " That only makes them more discontented and 
ready to pass judgment. Take one striking case. Take 
our enemies, the people of Madagascar. They are ahead of 
every other nation in the kind of education which teaches 
by doing. They have schools, and continuation schools, 



THE MODIFIED GARY SYSTEM 141 

and post-graduate schools in scroll work and plumbing and 
aeroplane construction and aniline dyes. And what is the 
result? They are the most enslaved nation of all and we 
are now engaged in saving democracy from their hands. If 
the people of Madagascar were not so well trained for life 
in their schools, the world would be ever so much better 
off." 

" Your Majesty has been reading Bernard Shaw," cried 
the Minister of Circulating Decimals, bitterly. 

The Principal Censor looked up. 

" That is a devil of a fellow, Shaw," he said. " I can do 
nothing with him. I cut out every other word and it makes 
just as good sense. I turn him backward and it doesn't 
make the slightest difference." 

But the Caliph commanded silence. 

" Take, on the other hand, the case of our good allies, 
the people of Russia, who have recently sent their monarch 
about his business. Now who was it that brought about 
the Russian Revolution? Was it the peasants who are 
always in touch with the education which comes from life; 
who know birds and flowers and why the wind blows and 
which way the seeds lie in an apple and can mend a wagon 
wheel and build an oven and repair a plow and play on the 
concertina? No, Abu Hassan. It is the workers of the 
towns who have forgotten all these things, who have learned 
to read just enough to make them restless — it is they who 
have shaken the world." 

" Your Majesty argues for an ill-adjusted educational 
system? " said the Minister of Circulating Decimals. 

" As a believer in democracy, I do," said the Caliph. 



STORY OF THE DISCOURAGED ORACLE 

AS the Commander of the Faithful, escorted by the 
Principal Censor and the present writer, was turning 
his face homewards, after a tour of the storage warehouse 
and wharfage district, he stopped short and pointed an anx- 
ious finger towards the river front. 

" Is that a man, Sinbad," he said, " leaning there over 
the string-piece and gazing meditatively into the waters of 
the Tigris? " 

" It is, Majesty," I said ; and peering through the dark 
I was relieved to find that it was indeed as I had spoken. 

" There is profound discouragement in the bend of his 
shoulders," said the Caliph. " We must save him from 
himself," and stealing forward, he laid a kindly hand on 
the watcher's arm. 

" Son," said his Majesty, " what ails you? " 

The watcher turned a lack-luster eye on our little group. 

" Everything, Stranger," he replied. 

" You find the world an ill place? " said the Commander 
of the Faithful. 

" I should hate to be quoted to that effect," replied the 
other. 

" Ah, then, the world is good to live in, even at this hour 
of midnight? " persisted his Majesty. 

" Search me," said the other, with mingled indifference 

142 



THE DISCOURAGED ORACLE 143 

and despair, and turned back to his contemplation of the 
yellow waters of the Tigris. 

His Majesty massaged his beard with those rapid down- 
ward strokes which I knew for the familiar sign of irrita- 
tion. 

' " What bothers you, then? " he rapped out, like the clean- 
cut masterful hero of one of our own magazine fiction stories. 

The midnight watcher turned upon us fiercely. 

" You want to know what I think of this world of yours? 
Well, I'll tell you. It's too darned big a world, that's what 
the matter is. And there are too many people in it. It 
gives me a headache." 

" Sire," whispered the Principal Censor, pulling out his 
note book, " this touches on sedition." But his Majesty 
motioned to him to hold his peace and addressed himself to 
the stranger in a voice that was unmistakably vibrant with 
sympathy. 

" Son," he said, " I frequently experience the same symp- 
toms. But I have never stopped to ascertain the cause. 
Who are you? " 

The stranger turned and faced us with folded arms. His 
aspect was still downcast, but he was obviously softening 
to his Majesty's show of interest. 

" I am, oh Nocturnal Inquirers," he said, " a Student of 
Contemporaneous Tendencies. With this I also combine 
the functions of an Accomplished Conversationalist. In 
both capacities it was my habit to sum up in a few felici- 
tous words everything that happened to come up over the 
dessert — the world, life, art, sex, and the future of democ- 
racy. Without boasting, I may say that I was more than 



i 4 4 SINBAD 

moderately successful in my field. Especially in prognosti- 
cating the progress of world politics my batting average 
was high. But now, take this ridiculous war — " 

" That's my headache, all right," cried the Commander 
of the Faithful. 

" And how should it be otherwise? " demanded, the 
stranger, bitterly. " I simply cannot get the geography of 
six continents into my head simultaneously, and that's all 
there is to it; and what is more, I suspect the commanders- 
in-chief can't either. While I am putting the finishing 
touches to the relief map of lower Mesopotamia some one 
goes and breaks through my impregnable positions in Flan- 
ders, after I had demonstrated that those positions simply 
couldn't be touched. And while I am busy exhausting the 
Kaiser's last reserves on the Balkan front, he springs 500,- 
000 men upon me in the upper valleys of the Hindu Kush." 

" We'll win that war yet," cried the Principal Censor, 
and then, aware of his professional indiscretion, " some- 
where and some time." 

" And what about the young generation? " cried the 
stranger. 

" It will doubtless grow up," remarked the Principal Cen- 
sor, sententiously. 

" To be sure it will, but how? " insisted the stranger. 
" Once upon a time when the world was smaller, you could 
say that the young generation was a distinct improvement; 
or you could say that it was going to the dogs. But now 
there are two million young people in Bagdad; of whom 
some go in for breaking school windows and some sit at 
home and knit for the soldiers and do without candy and 



THE DISCOURAGED ORACLE 145 

new shoes. And if there is anything worse than the young 
generation it's the drama." 

" What about our contemporary drama? " said the Caliph, 
as he sat on a coil of rope and pitched stones into the Tigris. 

" How's one to know? " replied the other dismally. 
" Once upon a time we had four playhouses in Bagdad, and 
if it wasn't a degrading and ominous crook-play season, it 
was a season rich with promise for the building up of a na- 
tional Mesopotamian drama. But nowadays if a building 
isn't a garage it's a theater; and when you have enumerated 
thirty-seven cheap melodramas, somebody mentions six first- 
class plays. So that in the end you don't know whether the 
drama in Bagdad is going to the devil or is developing into 
a force for national uplift." 

" But on the whole," I ventured to say, " we are going 
ahead. Now that two million women have the vote in the 
province of Bagdad, the general level of culture — " 

The stranger threw up his hands in horror. 

"Women! " he cried. "This person speaks of women! 
The only subject upon which it was still possible to pass a 
bit of an epigram without being asked for evidence! But 
now, when you say that Woman is this or Woman is that, 
some one flags you with a napkin and wants to know 
whether you mean this kind of woman or the other kind. 
The world was getting too big for me with all the men in 
it. Now they have let in the ladies." 

He buried his face in his hands and wept silently. 

" You disapprove of the outcome of the late suffrage 
referendum? " asked the Caliph softly. 

The stranger replied in heartbroken accents. 



146 SINBAD 

" I lost twenty-one sequins on that election. And how 
should it be otherwise? The voting mass is getting too big. 
How can you tell what it's going to do? When it's 650,000 
votes against 550,000 votes they call it a smashing majority. 
But if one voter in twelve went the other way the smashing 
majority would go the other way. How can you tell what 
that one man will do? He might get up on Election Day 
with a slight indigestion. He might be dissatisfied with 
the way the war is going in Kamchatka. Why, you can 
always find one plain fool in every twelve people you meet. 
And now it's going to be worse than ever." 

" I should think a nice deserted island — " I suggested. 

" I've just come back from one," the stranger sobbed. 
" I was brought up near one. We used to camp out there 
and go in swimming without bathing suits. Now Abdul 
Fez, of the Nineveh First National, has bought it and there 
are three golf links and seven thousand bungalows, Allah 
be merciful." 

But the Caliph, who had been thoughtfully biting at the 
nail of his thumb, here looked up and said, " Son, be com- 
forted. There is another side. This world may be so full 
of men and things that you can't sweep them all into one 
flashing epigram. But on the other hand, with so many 
people and things about, you can always be in the right, 
whatever you say. Formerly you hit it or you missed it. 
Now you are bound to hit something." 

" But it makes poor conversation," protested the stranger. 

" Not for the other fellow," said the Caliph. 



STORY OF THE COUNCIL OF ELDERS AND 
THE NEWER IMMIGRATION 

LIKE all other well-informed people here in Bagdad, 
I believed that the Commander of the Faithful was 
looking forward with satisfaction to the end of the first 
war session of the National Council. The Council, you will 
recall, is the legislative assembly of Mesopotamia. The 
name goes back to the very earliest times, being found in 
the cuneiform inscriptions, though there is a difference of 
opinion among scholars as to the correct reading, some 
transcribing it " Council," and others, " Belzaz." 

You will also recall that the Council comprises two Cham- 
bers, one of 96 members, known as the House of Elders, and 
one of 435 members, known as The Younger Set. There 
used to be a difference in the mode of election, the Elders 
being usually elected with suspicion and the Younger Set 
with indifference; but all distinctions have now been elimi- 
nated. 

Since the declaration of war against Madagascar the 
Council had been in continuous session. It now stands ad- 
journed after enacting a mass of useful war legislation and 
providing for the expenditure of sums ranging from eleven 
billion sequins to one hundred and forty-seven billion 
sequins, according to the color of the ink employed for the 
headlines. 

H7 



i 4 8 SINBAD 

Like all popular assemblies, the National Council of 
Mesopotamia has been something of a trial to the Executive 
head of the Government, because of its peculiar habit of 
legislation. The Council makes laws by inserting things 
into bills which it later throws out, the usual apportion- 
ment of time being, say, one afternoon for inserting some- 
thing and two weeks for throwing it out. This is naturally 
harassing to a Chief Executive in war time, especially if he 
has already been putting the law into effect and is only wait- 
ing for it to be enacted. For that reason it has been the 
common impression that between the Commander of the 
Faithful and the National Council there was no love lost. 

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when, in answer to my 
request for a brief statement on the achievements of the 
legislative session, the Caliph looked out of the window 
thoughtfully and remarked: " It's been a very good Coun- 
cil, Sinbad. I see them go — " 

" Not with regret, your Majesty? " I ejaculated. 

" Well, say, with a mingled feeling of relief and sym- 
pathy," he replied. And then very soberly, "We are an 
extremely irreverent folk, we Mesopotamians, and much 
given to light-minded jesting at things that are, after all, 
very close to our hearts, or ought to be. It has become a 
habit to speak of the Council, and especially of the Younger 
Set, as by turns or simultaneously stupid, unpatriotic, paro- 
chial-minded, and misrepresentative. We say that instead 
of keeping both eyes on his duty the average Youngersetter 
keeps one eye on his salary and the other on his constitu- 
ency. We say that he usually dare not call his soul his 
own, but is always thinking of the next election. Now, I 



THE COUNCIL OF ELDERS 149 

leave it to you, Sinbad, if that isn't after all what the 
younger Set is for — to be afraid of their constituencies. It 
may not be the highest statesmanship, but it is representa- 
tion." 

" But the national will, your Majesty, especially in time 
of crisis," I said. 

" What is the national will, Sinbad, but the product of a 
great fermentation of different wills? A favorite phrase 
describing a member of the Council is, in the popular lan- 
guage of the country, shatt-el-ahab , which means ' Young- 
man-with-his-ear-to-the-ground.' It is not a dignified posi- 
tion, Sinbad, but after all, it is a way of getting at public 
sentiment. When they get up from the ground and start 
comparing notes, something is bound to emerge. By an 
adjustment of 435 parochialisms we get something like a 
general sentiment; and I am there to trim the edges when 
needful." 

" Inexpugnable One," I said, " in times of crisis it is your 
Majesty alone that can see and think for the nation as a 
whole." 

" To some extent, perhaps," he conceded, " but in all sin- 
cerity it would be a much harder task for me to see singly 
for the whole country if I had not the 435 isolated views to 
guide me, correct me, warn me, and, on occasion, irritate 
me, perhaps. In the last emergency, I intervene." 

" And do they always listen to reason, Bright One? " I 
said. 

" Sometimes they listen to reason. Sometimes I read 
them a passage from the Koran in emphatic tones; that is 
part of the metier, as our great poet Sadi has said." 



i CO 



SINBAD 



He ran his fingers through his beard, deeply engrossed in 
his tboU^kt ; then: 

" And there is .mother point which people almost invaria- 
bly overlook in speaking of the Council and its narrow out- 
look, and that is the question of the Melting rot." 

I looked coin rent ion. illy .astonished. 

" You sec. Sinb.nl." he went on, " we are .\ people of 
many strains and races. Upon the aboriginal population 
ol Accadiaus and Sutneriaus. the ages have deposited suc- 
cessive strata of invasion Iranian highlanders. Babylonians. 
Assyrians. Tersians, Arabs. Turks, down to the latest im- 
migrants from Scythia. who have built up the needle indus- 
try in Bagdad, and the Mediterraneans, who have dug 
most of our canals and water works. Now it is the natural 
desire of thinking men that all these elements might emerge 
from what we call the Melting Pot as a single Mesopo- 
tamian national product." 

■• Majesty," I said, " l am i journalist rather than i 

thinking man, but the idea appeals irresistibly." 

•' Quite so." he said. " But people are sometimes unrea- 
sonable. Sinbad. They expect all these strains to mingle, 
wed. and blend, in the turn of a hand, so to speak. Where- 
as you can see for yourself that many years must pass 
before that physical amalgamation is completed. It is not 
in reason to expect that the latest arrival from Baluchistan, 
who is now engaged in repaving the streets of Bagdad, 
Should take for his wife a daughter oi our oldest Chaldean 
families. His son may. but even from him we must not 
eipect too much. It is a matter of generations." 
" Bui people are impatient. Imminence." I said. 



THE COUNCIL OF ELDERS 151 

" Kxa' tly," he laid. "And that is where our National 

Council comei in. Long before the immigrant! from Ba- 
tucbistm have minted their blood with the rest of the 
nation they will have elected a Baluchistanian representa- 
tive to the Younger Set of the Council. Perhaps be may 
at times think more as a Baluchistanian than a 1 a Meso* 

potamian, hut in that case he will be counter checked hy 

the representatives from the Chaldean, Accadian, 

Arab, and Turkish districts. Is other words, until we get 
our perfected Mesopotarnian type J like to think of the 

National Council as embodying the Melting-Pot in its most 
advanced stage of fusion," 

Since it is not CUStomary to applaud or to make com- 
ment, on a sermon, 1 remained silent. 

" Yes/' he went on half to himself. <! I like the Younger 
Set. '1 hey have their weaknesses and extravagances, but 
what then;-' They have a passion for post office! and 
rivers and harbors; and there is parasangage?" 

" Parasangage? " I stammered. 

" The law," be said, " which allows every member of 
the Council tWO silver ffquilM for every parasang he travels 
to and from the capital. As a result, some of them have 
developed the habit, of traveling from Basra to Y, 
by way of the Panama Canal. That's a minor matter, per- 
haps; only they have carried the practice of parasangage 
into their debates. That is why a member of the Council 
can seldom speak less than forty-eight hours. But who of 
lis is perfect in the eyes of Allah? " 



STORY OF THE CALIPH AND THE COSMIC 
URGE 

WHEN the returns from 2,546 kazas out of 3,324 
in the sanjak of Bagdad made it certain that suf- 
frage had carried, and that women at last were to enjoy 
the privileges which had been theirs about the year 2200 
B. C, his Majesty uttered a great sigh of relief, rose from 
his divan, smoothed his beard, and invited me to accom- 
pany him to the apartments occupied by his daughter Aye- 
sha and her husband the young Khan of Turkestan. We 
found Ayesha reclining on a couch — she had but recently 
returned from campaign headquarters in the Babel Tarik — 
and the young Khan at her feet reading to her out of a 
new volume of translations from Tchekhoff. A less intelli- 
gent woman than Ayesha would have discerned from the 
Caliph's bearing the purport of his visit. 

" Papa, this is dear of you," she cried as she ran for- 
ward to meet him. 

" Daughter and fellow-voter," said his Majesty affection- 
ately, " my heartiest congratulations. And to both you, 
Hassan and Ayesha, my sincere hope that you will renew 
the acquaintance interrupted by my daughter's enforced 
absences from home in a public cause." 

I detected a shade of embarrassment and pain in the 
young Khan's face as he bent to kiss the hand of his Im- 
perial father-in-law. But Ayesha spoke up gaily: 

153 



THE COSMIC URGE 153 

"We are running off for the week-end to Basra," she 
said; "and then back to work." 

The Commander of the Faithful looked worried. 

" But what other work is there for your hands, oh daugh- 
ter? " he said. 

" It's very simple," she replied. " Now that we have 
the vote, we start right in on our campaign for the regu- 
lation of the wine traffic in all cities of the first and second 
class. It will be a bully fight." And as the Caliph drew 
back in surprise: " You disapprove, papa? " 

His Majesty sat down on the couch and stared hopelessly 
before him. 

" Daughter," he said at length, " I confess that I had 
been looking forward to a rest." 

" But surely you would not have the world stand still? " 
cried Ayesha. 

" Not even for a year or two? " said the Commander of 
the Faithful, pitifully. " If you only knew what this con- 
tinuous agitation is doing to my game, Ayesha! I have 
developed an abominable slice. I was hoping that perhaps, 
for a little while, there would be nothing in the papers about 
protests and delegations. I don't think I could stand many 
more delegations, daughter. They play havoc with my 
blood pressure. And where is it all to stop? When you 
have regulated the wine traffic you will start a movement 
for university reform, and after that it will be rotation of 
crops, I suppose, and after that — " he waved his hands 
hopelessly. 

Ayesha regarded him severely. 

"I'm afraid you're getting old, papa," she said. 



154 SINBAD 

" Perhaps I am," he said. " Well, haven't we old people 
some rights? Only, I beseech you, Ayesha," he cried out 
in quick alarm, " please, please don't go and start a move- 
ment for the Protection of Sexagenarians. I really couldn't 
stand that. I'd much rather suffer in silence than be hon- 
orary chairman at an Old People's mass-meeting." 

" Father," she cried, neglectful of her husband's silent 
admonitions, " that's what all the stick-in-the-muds have 
been saying since the world began." 

" It must be a comfort to stick in the mud for a little 
while," murmured the Caliph. 

" I'd expect such opinions from the stodgy old anti- 
everythings," went on the impetuous daughter of the 
Caliphs, " but from you, the successor of kings and prophets? 
It's heartbreaking." 

" Ayesha," pleaded the young Khan, biting his nails. 

" Daughter," said the Caliph, " I may be a King and a 
Caliph, but I am also a human being and a golfer. As 
such, I deserve some consideration. And mind you, what 
is it I ask? An end to all progress? Not at all. Merely 
an armistice. Why couldn't we have five years of progress 
followed by, say, three years of comfort? A sort of Jubilee 
period, like the one which that sagacious legislator, Musa, 
ordained for the Israelites. It was to be a period of rest 
in which every man sat under his own fig tree instead of 
trying to spray fungicide all over his neighbor's fig trees. 
I believe I have my facts right, Sinbad? " 

" It is even as you say, Effulgency," I remarked, making 
a mental note to look up Israelites in the encyclopedia as 
soon as I got home. 



THE COSMIC URGE 155 

" For that matter," continued the Caliph, obviously 
pleased with his own happy thought, " it would be a good 
thing for everybody concerned. See with what fresh energy 
you could return to the attack, Ayesha, after a three years' 
holiday. That would be a sufficiently long truce. In three 
years I could get my score-card down to a point where 
even the Government ownership of railways wouldn't shake 
it." 

" So it amounts to this, father," said Ayesha, " that you 
would have the forces of righteousness and progress mark 
time and not interfere with the afternoon nap of a stupid, 
selfish, overfed world." 

The young Khan, her husband, walked to the window 
and played Abu el Nozeyr's Spring Song on the pane with 
nervous fingers, but the Caliph stroked his beard and looked 
down on the costly rug at his feet, copied from a design 
by Leon Bakst. 

" Now, that is just the doubt which has sometimes come 
to me, daughter," he said. " Is it always a quarrel be- 
tween people who give up the pleasures of life to fight for 
righteousness, and people who will not sacrifice their com- 
fort to duty? Sometimes I think that the people who are 
always agitating get as much fun out of it as those of us 
who like to sit still now and then. So that it isn't really 
sacrifice and martyrdom. Thus your good friend, Fatima, 
wife of my Under-Secretary for Sedition, El Hassim — " 

" What is wrong with Fatima? " challenged the princess. 

" Oh, nothing, absolutely nothing," the Caliph cried hast- 
ily. " An excellent woman and as brave as a lion. But 
when I asked El Hassim the other day why his wife is so 



156 SINBAD 

frequently out on hunger strikes, he replied, ' Serenity, she 
enjoys it.' And even when she is not fasting she asks ques- 
tions. She said to me the other day, at the reception to 
the Ambassador from Tegucigalpa, ' Majesty,' she said, ' do 
you not think that the young generation is splendidly grap- 
pling for a securer spiritual anchorage? ' Now, I leave it 
to you, what sort of question is that to one who has just 
returned from a meeting of the Confederated Reserve 
Board? " 

" Father," said Ayesha, " for thousands of years your 
ancestors in the Arabian desert lived a life of stolid conserv- 
atism. But when they broke out under the Prophet, they 
did not stop until they had conquered half the world. 
Would you have asked Amru and Abu Bekr to sit down 
for a dozen years between campaigns? They went on, the 
Koran in one hand and the sword in the other." 

The Caliph shook his head, but smiled. 

" A harem-scarem existence," he said. 

" That is always the way of you men when you can't 
answer," said Ayesha. 



STORY OF SINBAD'S DEPARTURE FROM BAGDAD 
FOR POINTS NORTH AND WEST 

TWENTY- FOUR hours after receipt of my instructions 
to leave Bagdad for home, I had my bags in order 
and was discussing passports with the Chairman of the 
Committee of Ways and Detours. 

" We shall miss you, Sinbad," the Chairman was kind 
enough to say. " Seldom has a foreign correspondent come 
to Bagdad so completely free from preconceived notions 
about Mesopotamia, its language, its history, its habits, its 
size and population, or its geographical location. You have 
written only what has been pointed out to you and you 
have believed only what you have been told. It is a pity 
you must go just when the weather and Bagdad are at their 
best." 

And in truth it is not without reluctance that I am now 
leaving the beautiful city in which I have spent nearly ten 
months crowded with the most delightful experiences. To 
picture Bagdad in the ravishing month of December would 
be a strain on my descriptive powers which the situation 
hardly justifies. 

The greater part of the day was spent in a farewell 
round of visits, both official and private. Naturally, I 
should have begun by paying my respects to his Majesty, 
but he was at the moment attending a meeting of the War 
Cabinet, from which, as I learned subsequently, he emerged 

«57 



158 SINBAD 

with a very ingenious idea for a new kind of brassie grip. 
I therefore turned aside into the office of his Chief of 
Police, the good and simple Mesrour. 

Mesrour shook my hand with extraordinary warmth. " I 
am a simple man, Sinbad," he said. " I have never been 
to college and I come right to the point. I am glad you 
are going." 

" But we've been good friends, Mesrour," I said. 

" Sure," he replied. " But I am responsible for the per- 
sonal safety of his Majesty; and since your arrival you 
have been his partner in adventures that have made my 
hair turn white. Now that you are gone I will always 
know where I can find his Majesty. He will be on the 
links. Whither are you bound? " 

" Jerusalem, likely," I said. 

" Allah be with you," he said. 

" But I may change my mind and start for Petrograd." 

" Allah and all his angels go with you. Good morning." 

From him I made my way to the apartments of the 
young Khan of Turkestan, where I found the young prince 
taking dictation on the typewriter from the Princess Ayesha. 
She was unfeignedly sorry to have me go, but consoled 
herself with the opportunity I should enjoy of studying the 
advance of woman in the various countries. To that end 
she insisted on supplying me with letters of introduction 
to the Lady Zenaide at Jerusalem ; the Lady Aida at Cairo ; 
Madame Restova at Petrograd; Madame Dubost at Paris; 
Signora Cagliari at Rome, etc., all of whom were contribu- 
tors to the Encyclopedia of the Higher Emancipation on 
which Ayesha is now actively at work. 



SINBAD'S DEPARTURE 159 

The young Khan did me the honor of escorting me 
through the antechamber of the apartment, and as we shook 
hands he remarked, with that slightly worried air which 
has become second nature to him ever since Ayesha accepted 
the chairmanship of the League for the Enforcement of 
Domestic Peace, " Sinbad, I shall never forget your services 
during that great crisis when Ayesha — " 

" Oh, your Highness," I exclaimed, " I have been more 
than amply rewarded — " 

" I was going to say, Sinbad, when you see those ladies 
to whom Ayesha has recommended you — if you could hint 
that they might write their contributions on only one side 
of the paper — good-by, old man." 

I had time only for a few brief words with the Principal 
Censor, whom I found in the royal vestibule, superintending 
a gang of plumbers' assistants who were repairing a leak 
in the radiator. 

" Good-by, P. C," I said, " I leave by the—" 

" Never mind specifying the train, Sinbad," he whispered. 

" And expect to arrive in — " 

" Pray, be careful, Sinbad. Go, and the peace of Allah 
with you." 

" P. C," I said, " I need not describe the state of — " 

" Sinbad, for heaven's sake," he pleaded, and gave me 
his right hand, while he placed the other over my lips. 

I had scarcely completed my third prostration in the 
royal chamber when the Caliph spoke up, in tones that 
pretended to be sharp but did not lack affection: 

" Why are you leaving us, Sinbad? " 

" Inimitable One," I responded, " it's orders from the 



160 SINBAD 

home office. They think my usefulness here is at an 
end." 

" So Bagdad is no longer of concern to the outside 
world? " he said curtly. 

" Superb One," I said, " the poet Al Aarab has remarked, 
' Happy the city which has lost its value as a news cen- 
ter.' There is nothing more for me to see in Bagdad, be- 
cause your Majesty has succeeded in establishing perfect 
harmony and discipline. The food dealers are selling their 
wares slightly below cost. Ships are being built faster than 
necessary. The Minister of Munitions and Aviation insists 
on surrendering his rights of priority to the Minister of 
Anthracite and Bituminous; and the Committee on Public 
Stimulation is never more than seven days behind the news- 
papers in giving out the facts. Why should I stay? I go 
now to study the workings of democracy in other lands." 

" So you find in Mesopotamia no mutterings of the revo- 
lutionary spirit? " 

"None, Intelligent One," I said. "The throne of the 
Caliphs stands on bedrock." 

" Ah, well," he sighed. " Perhaps ninety-six for the 
eighteen holes is as much as any man of my age has a 
right to expect. I shall miss you." 

" There is always the Principal Censor, your Majesty," 
I said. " His short game is matchless." 

" It is," cried the Caliph, " but the professional habit 
has got him. Yesterday he suppressed four strokes on his 
own score-card." 

"Your Majesty has no truer servant and friend than 
P. C. ; " I said. 



SINBAD'S DEPARTURE 161 

"Except, perhaps, yourself, Sinbad," and he held out 
his hand. 

" Oh, your Majesty! " 

" Au revoir, my son. Allah keep you." 



PART II 
WILLIAMS 



THEY 

WILLIAMS asked if the American people was really 
going to stand idly by while they were putting 
over on us the complete horrors of the blue Sunday. 

" Who are ' they '? " I said. 

" Why, all of them," said Williams with a wave of the 
hand around the room; and I could only wonder just how 
the bookcases, and the telephone directory, and the pictures 
on the wall, and the clock on the steeple across the way, 
were collaborating to fasten the Puritan yoke on our necks. 

" All of them," said Williams, " who are in this conspir- 
acy to take away the bit of personal liberty we have man- 
aged to hang on to." 

" And do you believe," I said, " that any conspiracy can 
really reduce a free nation of one hundred and five millions 
to chains and slavery? " 

" It's worse than that," said Williams. " It isn't one 
hundred and five millions. That's what they — the census 
people, I mean — tell you. It's four or five times as much. 
Just add up all the conspiracies now under way and see if 
the population of the United States isn't nearer six hundred 
million. In fact, I have the rough figures with me." 

One glance at Williams' list was enough to show that I 
had been, indeed, living in a fool's paradise of optimism: 

165 



166 WILLIAMS 

Blue Sunday Conspirators 40,000,000 

Saloon and Race-Track Conspirators 25,000,000 

Catholic Conspirators 30,000,000 

Jewish Conspirators 5,000,000 

Buy-a-Book-a-Week Conspiracy 13,000,000 

Sinn Fein Conspiracy 20,000,000 

Eat-an-Apple-a-Day Plot 15,000,000 

British-Ulster Conspiracy 35,000,000 

Bolshevists 10,000,000 

Burleson Home and Flag Alliance 5,000,000 

Beef Trust Conspirators 500 

Government Ownership Propaganda 15,000,000 

Buy-a-Record-a-Minute Conspiracy 20,000,000 

Write- Your-Mother-Once-a-Year Conspiracy ...55,000,000 

American Federation of Labor Plot 15,000,000 

Greenwich Village-Samovar-Batik Conspiracy . . 500,000 

Seize-Mexico Conspiracy 30,000,000 

Philippine Independence Conspiracy , 10,000,000 

Wear-Your-Old-Clothes Conspiracy 95,000,000 

" Four hundred millions already," said Williams. " So 
much for your official census figures." 

" But, hold on a minute, Williams," I said. " You can't 
go and divide people up into so many closed compartments. 
Those conspiracies overlap. There must be Sinn Feiners 
who are fond of an apple after lunch. There must be Beef 
Trust lawyers who believe in beer and light wines. There 
must be pro-Germans who write to their mothers now and 
then. I am personally acquainted with publishers who get 
off the train in the afternoon and kiss their wives in full 
view of the engine driver. Your figures need rectification." 

" Exactly," said Williams. " That's where the additional 
two hundred million conspirators come in. All you have to 



THEY 167 

do is to add in the Catholic Buy-a-Book-a-Week group, the 
Bolshevist Eat-an-Apple-a-Day Alliance, the Irish- Jewish- 
Methodist-Government-Ownership group, the Ulster- Japan- 
ese-Tonsilitis Association, the Gompers-Foster-Sex Hygiene 
drive, the Armenian-Gary School Federation, and the Sinn 
Fein Out-of-Door Sleeping Clubs. Only then will you real- 
ize what the people of the United States are up against." 

" And what is the remedy? " I said. " Publicity? " 

Williams hesitated. 

" As a rule," he said, " yes. But there are exceptions." 

Williams said that he has personally and for some years 
past been the victim of a conspiracy in his own home, with 
his nine-year-old daughter Catherine in the role of chief con- 
spirator. The plot always relates to Christmas and the sub- 
ject matter is usually a handkerchief personally initialed 
by Catherine, or a shaving-towel personally hemstitched by 
Catherine, or perhaps a calendar with poems written by 
Catherine with illustrations by the author. It is true, said 
Williams plaintively, that Christmas comes only once a year, 
but with Catherine it begins to come about the middle of 
February when she begins to break ground, so to speak, for 
her Christmas present to father. 

I told Williams that I should not mind myself being the 
object of such fond plots and seditions, and I said further 
that Catherine must be a pleasant thing to have around 
the house. 

" Oh, she is," said Williams. " But don't you see the 
difficulty? " And he went on to describe what a time he 
has between the middle of February and Christmas Eve, 
trying not to unmask Catherine's conspiracy. The child 



1 68 WILLIAMS 

leaves the plot lying around all over the house. He can- 
not go to his bureau for a fresh shirt without stumbling 
upon, say, an embroidery frame which puzzles him until 
shrieks from Catherine command him to put the mystery 
down and go away. He finds spools of silk on the piano. 
He picks up unidentified cambrics and muslins and linen 
squares, and has them snatched from his hand by Cath- 
erine. The child has, of course, taken everybody else but 
Williams into the secret, and Williams cannot enter into 
routine conversation with his wife or his son or the maid 
without being closely watched by Catherine. 

Nay, said Williams, sometime in early spring Catherine 
begins to put dark questions to him, invitations to guess 
what she is giving him for Christmas, and Williams says 
the strain not to guess what he already knows is really 
exhausting. As Christmas draws near, said Williams, he 
cannot move about the apartment without intruding upon 
Catherine and her conspiracy. It has come to the point, 
said Williams, where the only safe way for him to enter a 
room is to walk backwards ringing a large hand-bell. But 
that, after all, is a different kind of conspiracy, he said. 

" I don't know," I said. " Between the Great Hem- 
stitched Towel Conspiracy and the Great Sinn Fein-Blue 
Law-Government Ownership Conspiracy the difference does 
not seem to be as great as you imagine. Your part in both 
seems to be about the same. When they ' put over ' a 
Christmas gift on you or ' put over ' a Catholic Conspiracy 
on you, the essence of the matter seems to be first that 
you are a fairly willing accomplice, and second that you 



THEY 169 

are quite prepared to display joy or horror at what you 
have known all along. People who don't believe in Santa 
Claus insist on believing in Conspiracy as the machine 
that makes the world go round and in They as the engi- 
neers of the machine. And that is an infantile thing." 

"What is a person to do? " said Williams. 

" Persons have eyes, ears, and a mind in a more or less 
advanced state of development," I said. " Why not use 
them? What sort of a world is this, anyhow, in which things 
never happen through reason or natural causation or acci- 
dent, but always because all sorts of wicked Theys are 
pulling secret wires? What kind of a man are you and 
what sort of nation do you belong to, that nothing hap- 
pens because you want it to happen, but always because 
somebody else says 'Hist! ' to somebody else? Here are 
a hundred and five million people — I am not really con- 
vinced about your six hundred millions, Williams — who are 
always being yanked and pushed and fooled and wheedled 
by They. We did not go to war because we wanted to go 
to war, but They shoved us into the war. We did not 
want prohibition, but They put prohibition over on us. 
We are bound to have the blue Sunday because They are 
going to force it upon us. They raise our rent, They scalp 
us at the butcher's counter, They compel our women to 
wear shoes with leather tops fourteen inches high. They 
sell us out to Great Britain. They conduct secret traffic 
with the Soviets — well! " 

" What is the cause? " said Williams, obviously carried 
away on the tide of my eloquence. 



170 WILLIAMS 

" Mental laziness, greatly aggravated by war-bred super- 
stition," I said. 

" Well," said Williams, " why can't we get away from 
this war psychology and settle down? " 

" Because they have scuttled the peace," I said. 



CHEERFUL GIVERS 

HOLIDAY shopping had brought Williams to the 
point, he said, where he found himself envying the 
Christmasless heathen in his darkness; he was that tired 
(i. e., Williams). The problem of the children at home was 
not a difficult one. By the first week in September they 
usually managed to convey a definite impression of what 
they wanted for Christmas, together with precise directions 
as to the shop window in the neighborhood where Wil- 
liams's duty awaited him. But it was different with Mrs. 
Williams. Finding out what she wanted most was, after 
nineteen years, still a good deal of a task. Williams said 
he wished, for a few weeks, he were a Mohammedan or a 
Parsee, or something pagan of the sort. 

I did not think it necessary to play the pedant and argue 
that Mohammedans are not pagans; or to point out that if 
he were a Mohammedan he would probably have several 
Mrs. Williamses to buy gifts for, if not for Christmas, then 
for the Fourth of July or Labor Day or whenever it is the 
Moslems are annually worried. But I did remind Williams 
of what President Butler has said: that we have a new 
paganism of our own and this might be the way out. 

" Why does Mr. Butler think we are pagans? " said Wil- 
liams with the light of hope in his eyes. 

" He says," I said, " that the present generation denies 
the existence of law and has made personal appetite its guide 

171 



172 WILLIAMS 

in life. He says that people think too much of their own 
individuality and not enough of the basic traditions upon 
which civilization has been built up." 

I have seldom seen Williams so emphatic in approval. 

" The president of Columbia University has the right 
dope," he said. " That is it exactly. There are no more 
traditions. For a good many years after we were married 
Christmas came easy. I bought her half a dozen pairs of 
gloves. Sometimes it would be silk stockings, before they 
became common. Sometimes I would put in extra thought; 
I would look around for a week or two and get her a couple 
of blouses. And then this individuality business came 
along." 

" Individuality? " I said. 

" Yes," he said. " Lots of people nowadays make a living 
by complicating things for other people and insisting that 
they realize their individuality. Once upon a time I used 
to step into the store and get myself a dozen white collars. 
If they didn't have them in quarter sizes I took an even 16. 
Nowadays I get circulars in the mail from haberdashers 
who want to know whether, in purchasing white collars, I 
make any attempt to express myself. They want to know 
whether I simply buy shoes to wear or shoes that will em- 
phasize my personality. What difference it really makes I 
don't know. All I know is that people in the subway step 
just as frequently upon my individual feet to-day as they 
used to do upon my box toes." 

" Too true," I said. 

" And now it is Christmas gifts. I get circulars asking 
whether the things I give are just presents or whether they 



CHEERFUL GIVERS 173 

reflect the soul of the recipient. Some go further. They 
want me to take a little time off and ask myself whether I 
ought to give Mrs. Williams the thing she wants most or 
the thing I want to give her most. That's a nice problem 
to unload upon a man, with business what it is." 

" But these circulars go beyond asking questions, don't 
they? " I said. " They offer to help out." 

" True," he said. " I have received circulars from people 
suggesting that I let them pick out a Christmas present for 
Mrs. Williams — something that would be sure to express 
her inmost self, something that would make her feel the 
thing was manufactured, jobbed, wholesaled, and retailed 
for her and her only. And in a way it is a tempting offer. 
All I'd have to do is to say that Mrs. Williams's telephone 
number is 4856 and they'll send her a book-rack that will 
appeal to all that is deepest in her. But I can't quite see 
that." 

" Williams," I said, " be a pagan. Buy her a hat." 

" A hat ? " said Williams. " It isn't done. And I wouldn't 
know how to go about it anyhow. Besides, how do I know 
she'd like it? We sometimes differ in that respect." 

" Exactly," I said. " Express your personality by getting 
her a hat you like. Then she will give full scope to her 
own individuality by changing it. The arrangement is al- 
most ideal." 

" But a hat," said Williams. 

" Why not a hat? Have you ever stopped to think how 
intimate a part of a woman's personality is her hat? " And 
I showed him a picture in U Illustration of a war memorial 
service in Notre Dame. " See how all the heads are bowed 



174 WILLIAMS 

in unmistakable emotion; yet even in such reverent mo- 
ments and in such solemn places women are not required 
to remove their hats." 

" They do in theaters and offices," he said. 

" That is only for convenience," I said. " The fact that 
they keep them on in church shows how almost inseparable 
a part of her is a woman's hat. And think of the mere 
audacity of the stroke. There won't, in all likelihood, be an- 
other such Christmas gift in town. It's almost Napoleonic 
—it's—" 

" Pagan," said Williams, a yes. But at my age it would 
be rather absurd to start buying hats for ladies. It opens 
up all sorts of vistas." 

" Yet you want to get away from the commonplace," I 
said. 

" If it may be done with propriety," said Williams. 

"Well," I said, "what is it that Mrs. Williams does 
like? " 

" She likes what all women of refinement like," he said. 
u She likes to be surrounded by beautiful things that are 
at the same time useful and within our means. She has a 
really exquisite taste for color and fabric." 

" And not too popular? " 

" No," he said. 

" Buy her a nice smoking jacket for yourself," I said. 

He reminded me that the problem was a serious one. 

I told him I was quite serious. My suggestion combined 
all the requisites — originality, beauty, utility, safety. I 
pointed out how in the ordinary course of events he might 
be buying Mrs. Williams an afternoon wrap that he thought 



CHEERFUL GIVERS 175 

she would like, and she would be buying him a smoking 
jacket that she thought he would like. How much safer 
and pleasanter all round it would be if she bought him the 
afternoon wrap for Christmas and he bought her the smoking 
jacket. 

He seemed interested and I pressed my advantage. 

" Buy her that smoking jacket," I said. " It will bring 
you closer together than any Christmas you have known. 
Buy her that box of Hidalgo Perfectos that goes with the 
smoking jacket. Buy her that extension art-bronze ash tray. 
Put yourself into the gift. Surround her with that holiday 
atmosphere which is, after all, the essence of the whole thing. 
What more esthetic gift can you devise for a woman of 
taste than a fairly good-looking man in a handsome smoking 
coat knocking the ash off a noble cigar into a tray that 
Rodin might have modeled? " 

He stared out into the distance. Then he shivered 
slightly. 

" Come out of the clouds, man alive," he said. " Talk 
sense." 

" How can I talk sense," I said, " if I don't really know 
whether you want to be a pagan or a Christian for Christ- 
mas? What is it you do want to give her? " 

" Oh, well, it's already done," he said. " I put in two 
days' thinking. Say twelve solid hours of thinking. Then 
I went out and bought her three pairs of gloves, three pairs 
of silk stockings, and a blouse. Do you think she'll be 
pleased? " 

" Tell her about the twelve hours," I said. 



REALISM 

FATHER, ever since Narcissa could remember, snored 
in his sleep. It was not the healthy, rhythmic rum- 
ble of the natural man after a hard day's work. Such 
reverberations of the nasal passages have a wild beauty of 
their own. ... Of tom-toms droning midnight rites in 
Congo forests. ... Of dauntless cannon rolling over bridges 
to victory. . . . No; in Father's case it was the exuda- 
tion of an all-pervasive spiritual malady, reinforced by 
adenoids. He did not breathe. He choked, gargled, gasped 
himself awake, glared a furious denial that he had ever 
been asleep, and went off again. 

Father usually began operations immediately after sup- 
per. Narcissa tried in vain to make him call it dinner. 
But he said that his own father always ate supper at 6 
o'clock and his grandfather before him. Immediately after 
supper he removed his coat and collar, unbuttoned his 
vest, sat down in the morris chair, lit his pipe, opened 
the only book he was ever known to pick up, and fell 
asleep. The book was " Plutarch's Lives." 

Only Father always pronounced it Plut-artch. He also 
said Alleyxander the Great and Themistokels. ... On the 
second syllable from the end. . . . 

The leather cushions of the morris chair were originally 
green, but they were scabrous with twenty years of ash- 
drippings from Father's pipe. There were times when, to 

176 



• REALISM 177 

flee the sight of that chair, Narcissa would have gone any- 
where . . . with any one. ... A caster was missing from 
the off fore leg, and as the chair sagged forward on the 
bias under the weight of Father, relaxed like a monstrous 
bread pudding, it took on the aspect of leering debauchery 
that was, to Narcissa's raw-nerved soul, the Heart of Evil. 
The wart on the right side of Father's nose was pulpous 
and iridescent in the lamplight. 

If there was anything worse than Father asleep in the 
morris chair it was Father eating breakfast. Thwarted in- 
stincts, ingrowing appetites, here found their cataclysmic 
revenge in a monstrous prodigality of food products poured 
forth over napkin, table cloth, and personal raiment. Mr. 
Wells could have read the history of years in the cereal 
deposits on Father's vest. Prune juice — and sad, crabbed, 
dun-colored prunes they were — manipulated as Father man- 
ipulates it would make the next world war a nightmare of 
destruction. Or if it was grapefruit. . ■. . Father eating 
grapefruit was one of the fifteen indecisive battles of the 
world. . . . 

The house in which Father lived was something fierce. 
It had not been painted since the day it was built. Not 
because Father was too poor to afford it, but because it 
was essential to the atmosphere of this story. The porch 
steps sagged. The lattice work under the porch showed 
gaps through which the poultry wandered . . . starved, 
scrawny, unpedigreed poultry laying eggs without purpose, 
without vision, in sheer mechanical reaction to the herd 
instinct. . . . 

The plumbing was rotten. There was one particular 



178 WILLIAMS 

faucet in the bath tub which has seared itself on Narcissa's 
memory in letters of a decaying phosphorescence. That 
faucet dripped . . . dripped all day and dripped all night 
. . . without purpose, without challenge, without construc- 
tive protest, implacable, gravitational, simply because a 
washer was missing and uncle, who had been sent to the 
store to get a new one, had spent the money on bootleg 
red-eye. Narcissa lay awake through the white nights, 
staring at the ceiling, listening to the faucet drip . . . 
dripping, dripping . . . like the minister on Sunday. It 
was Poe's torture of the water drop on Narcissa's soul. 
. . . The radiator clanged .... Father chortled, gagged, 
snorted, gasped . . . drip, drip, drip. . . . She lay av/ake 
and counted. . . . "Waste! waste! " Narcissa groaned. 
Drip, drip, clang, clang, chortle, gag, Plut — artch, Alleyx- 
ander the Great, Themistokels — God! God! the shame 
and ugliness of it all! 

Brother smoked cigarettes behind the barn all day and 
shot pool half of the night. He was not vicious. He 
was just mean. Narcissa did not look back in after days 
to brother with any sense of active dislike. You cannot 
hate emptiness. A whiff of stale tobacco ... a nasal fal- 
setto ... an Adam's apple. . . . 

Grandma was terrible. She pre-empted the rocking chair 
next to the radiator and oscillated from after supper to io 
every night, savagely rejecting every hint about going to 
bed. One of the rockers was broken off in front, two inches 
beyond where the right leg of the chair entered, and every 
time the old lady was negotiating the return trip the chair 
lurched forward and sideways and threatened to spill Grand- 



REALISM 179 

ma. She screeched and woke up Father in the morris chair 
and they glared at each other ... a look of hatred and sus- 
picion . . . basilisk . . . out of the Pit. ... No doubt 
Father would have been glad to precipitate Grandma out of 
the rocker if he had the courage. No doubt Grandma was 
hoping that something would result from that missing caster 
in Father's morris chair. But mutual malevolence sought no 
active discharge; it spent itself on the air, poisoning it — 
chlorin . . . phosgene . . . dichlorethyl sulphide. . . . And she 
had once been beautiful, this maternal grandmother of hers, 
thought Narcissa. And the Comic Spirit had used Grand- 
ma's beauty to provide a mate for Father, who gurgled in 
his sleep, in an unbuttoned vest, jerking his head back 
every little while, so that the light from the gooseneck 
electric lamp fell upon a gold-plated collar button. 

Narcissa felt she would stifle. She groped her way to 
the door. She pressed her head against a veranda column, 
from which the paint was peeling off ... in scabs. 

Only by contrast with the hell inside did she find just 
tolerable, for a moment, this purgatorial landscape that 
stretched out on every side. How symbolic of the life 
inside was this flatness which ran in every direction to the 
horizon. Not the flatness of a pancake which calls up 
rich associations of brown-and-gold syrup. Not the flat- 
ness of a college professor's cap on commencement day, 
which calls up youth . . . youth . . . youth. . . . How 
long was it since she had been young? wondered Narcissa. 
. . . Not the flatness of a trombone emitting jazz, which 
evokes youth, passion, adventure, challenge. No, it was 
the flatness of one-half of 1 per cent, beer after it has 



180 WILLIAMS 

been in the tumbler for ten minutes — Dead Sea . . . mias- 
ma. . . . 

This was Colorado, and Grandfather, who built the house, 
must have had an awful time finding the flat landscape 
which his stunted soul and the exigencies of our story de- 
manded; but he found it. There were mountains one might 
have glimpsed if not for the perpetual fog. When it did 
not mist there were sandstorms. When it did not blow 
sand it rained. Not the great, warm, fertilizing rain of 
freer climes, but a mean, cold, chill, funereal, dripping. 
Drip — drip — clang — gurgle — Plut-artch, Themistokels — Ah 
God, the shame and pity of it! ... 

The children were dreadful. Mabel snooped around and 
listened. Henry had just got 37 per cent, in his arith- 
metic test. He never washed behind the ears. 



KNIGHTS AT THE CROSS ROADS 

WE were talking of this sudden lurch from a world of 
sad but great things into a world of things sad and 
mean; from a front page ablaze with the lawlessness of 
war and revolution into a front page placarded with the 
sorry lawlessness of profiteers, grafters, drunken joy-riders, 
and dead babies in moving-picture theaters. And some of 
us said that the remedy must come from better Govern- 
ment, and some said that the remedy must come from a co- 
operative citizenship, and we were just passing on, by 
natural sequence to Saturday's game at New Haven, when 
an idea came to Williams. 

" What we need," he said, " is a new order of knight- 
hood; a secret order. We need a brotherhood consecrated 
to the task of making trouble on underheated trolley cars." 

We asked why trolley cars, and he said not trolley cars 
merely, but they would do to begin with. He said that 
trolley cars were cold in winter because the public was too 
busy to make trouble. People had to reach the office at 9 
and were eager to get home at 6:30, and never had the time 
to appear in court against railroad companies. People were 
timid, too; but the great difficulty was that they had no 
time. We needed an order of knighthood whose business 
it should be to make trouble. We might pay the members 
$5,000 a year to get into rows and show up in court to 
prosecute. 

181 



1 82 WILLIAMS 

The idea caught on. In less than no time we had drafted 
a program sufficient to keep a good-sized order of chivalry- 
occupied for years to come. It would refuse to pay fares in 
trolley cars where the temperature was below 45 in De- 
cember. It would refuse to pay couvert charges in hotels. 
It would refuse to tip ignorant or impudent waiters. It 
would take back unsatisfactory merchandise to the store and 
insist upon having one's money back as promised. It would 
reply to a thrust from a subway guard's knee with a right 
to the jaw. It would apply the same treatment to the swine 
who hurls himself into an overpacked subway car and 
crushes down women. It would insist on elevator men clos- 
ing the gates to their cars before starting up or down. 

" It would also smash in the face of weighing machines 
that refuse to weigh and slot machines that refuse to de- 
liver chocolate," said one of us. And he went on to de- 
scribe the stark fury that besets him in such cases; to this 
extent, that he has more than once dashed his umbrella into 
the simpering dials and mirrors of those public robbers, hav- 
ing looked around first to see that nobody was watching. 

Some one brought up the question of uniforms and in- 
signia for the new order. 

" The uniform," said Williams, " would be all wool, dou- 
ble sewn, two buttons on cuffs, pockets stayed and tacked 
to prevent ripping, collars basted and felled, pants full lined 
and reinforced at knees and seats. In other words, the 
uniform will be designed by Hart, Wallach & Bloch with 
that touch of refined individuality which enables a man 
to lose himself in a crowd." 

And he went on to show that anonymity was the prime 



KNIGHTS AT CROSS ROADS 183 

requisite for his new type of knight errant. He must not 
be known as a knight errant or his usefulness would be de- 
stroyed. He must be one of the crowd, concentrating in 
himself all the wrongs and resentments of the crowd. 

We rose more and more to his idea. One of us saw how 
the new chivalry would cure graft in business. Why does a 
tradesman pay blackmail to the policeman or the labor 
thug? Because paying graft is cheaper than being lugged 
to court for obstructing the sidewalk with egg boxes. Be- 
cause paying graft is cheaper than being held up on a build- 
ing contract. Well, then, we would plant one of our new 
Samurai on Greenwich Street in the guise of an egg mer- 
chant, and we would set up another Bayard in the contract- 
ing business. And when the grafters appeared our dis- 
guised knights would tell the cop to go to the devil and kick 
the labor parasite out of the door. They could afford to 
do so because our knights would be six feet two inches high 
and would have no bona fide business to save from ruin. 

Our eyes glowed. We saw untold possibilities in this 
Knighthood of Troublemakers. One of us said the idea 
could be applied to every phase of our national life. He 
said, What is the reason for our intellectual backwardness? 
It is that Americans are hostile to the give-and-take of con- 
versation. Let some one in mixed company remark that it 
is too bad the Irish want to conquer Nova Zembla and the 
rest of the company, especially if the speaker is a woman, 
will agree, if only by their polite silence. We are too polite. 
A thousand knights distributed around a thousand dinner 
tables and instructed to say in a loud voice, " I don't think 
that is at all the case," would raise the level of American 



i8 4 WILLIAMS 

culture in a week. We would instruct our knights in real 
reverence for womanhood. We would tell them, the next 
time they heard a lady say something false or foolish, to 
treat her rough. 

Most of us thought this was going too far, and we passed 
on to the requirements for membership in the new order. 

" Over six feet and preferably a halfback on one of the 
Eastern teams." Agreed. 

" A quick temper." Agreed. 

" A sense of humor." 

That puzzled us at first. It apparently contradicted the 
preceding stipulation. But Williams said a sense of humor 
was essential. 

" Don't you see," he said, " that one of the things our 
knights will have to contend with will be the hostility of 
the crowd whom they are trying to serve? If a knight re- 
fuses to pay his fare in a trolley car, and expostulates with 
the conductor about the heat, the other passengers will tell 
the knight to hire a hall. If a knight holds up a subway 
train because women are being trampled upon the passen- 
gers will tell him to get out and climb into his limousine. 
The crowd must be defended against its own spirit of servi- 
tude." 

Agreed. 

" He must be vowed to celibacy." 

" Why? " 

" Obviously. In the first place, our knight would have 
to spend a great many evenings away from home; in police 
cells, in car barns, and occasionally in hospital. But the 
principal reason is that women are a mighty influence for 



KNIGHTS AT CROSS ROADS 185 

servility. Why do men endure cold trolley cars or stock- 
yard subway cars? Because there is a woman waiting at 
home or in the theater lobby. Why do we submit to head 
waiters and taxi drivers? Because we must consider the 
feelings of the lady with us. Wives have been known to 
save 200-pound husbands from injury at the hands of no- 
pound hat-check boys. Celibacy it must be." And it was 
so agreed. 

But toward the end of the proceedings some one cast a 
chill over our high fervor. He asked how long would it be 
before our knights caught the New York spirit, and squeezed 
forward meekly when the guard said, " Plenty of room in 
front 1 " 



WISDOM OF THE EAST 

AFTER-DINNER speakers, since the beginning of the 
season, have demanded justice for nearly every con- 
ceivable cause. But why, said Williams, has no one arisen 
to demand common justice for the Great Wall of China? 
The most celebrated structure in history, with the possible 
exception of the Pyramids and the Parthenon, it is also 
the most misunderstood. Political economists abuse it, 
feminists sneer at it, progressives put it in the same class 
with Penrose and Uncle Joe Cannon. Yet no one can 
really tell you where the Great Wall stands, how big it is, 
and what it was meant for. Completed by the Emperor 
Tsin-Chi-Hwangti in 104 B. C, the finger of scorn was 
pointed at the Chinese Wall for the first time by an after- 
dinner speaker at the Hotel Ishtar in Antioch in the winter 
of 203 B. C, and for the last time at the dinner of the 
Intercollegiate Socialist Society a few weeks ago. 

Williams came late to the dinner. The tables had been 
removed, and he was just in time to hear the second speaker 
on the program denounce the Chinese W T all which middle- 
class society has built around itself to ward off the intru- 
sion of new ideas. The next speaker, a very young man, 
laid much emphasis on being, with others who thought like 
him, an oasis in the desert. The speaker after him referred 
to Moloch and frigid Puritanism. Having missed the first 
speaker of the evening, Williams was unable to say whether 

1S6 



WISDOM OF THE EAST 187 

the speaker had alluded to the maelstrom of competition. 
Departing a few minutes before the end, Williams could not 
say whether the Juggernaut of modern industrialism re- 
ceived due mention. It may be put down as a fact that 
the program of any radical or progressive public dinner 
includes one Chinese Wall, one Oasis, one Maelstrom, one 
Moloch, one Juggernaut, one Frigid Puritanism. 

The reader will observe that out of the half-dozen popular 
objects of reprobation just mentioned, all but two come 
from the Far East. Why this should be so would make an 
interesting inquiry, said Williams, if not for the rule he has 
set himself never to wander from his main topic, differing 
in this respect from the ordinary after-dinner speaker, who 
begins with the Irishman who lost his way on a dark night, 
passes on to the Minimum Wage, and concludes with the 
negro who had a severe toothache. 

What, demanded Williams, do people mean when they 
accuse somebody or something of being surrounded with a 
Chinese Wall of indifference? In the first place, China was 
not surrounded by its Great Wall. The Wall merely ran 
along part of the northern frontier. You could get into 
China from the east as the Japanese did when they came 
to study the secrets of Chinese art, or from the west, the 
way Marco Polo did, or from the south, the way the 
Buddhists did. Of course you can see how the slander 
about the Great Wall of China, as circulated by after- 
dinner speakers, has arisen. They have heard of China as 
an isolated nation, and they have heard of the Chinese 
Wall as a device to keep somebody out of China, and they 
assumed that the Chinese people built the Wall in the form 



1 88 WILLIAMS 

of a complete circle for the purpose of keeping out new 
ideas. Whereas the fact is that the Great Wall was built 
only along the northern frontier to keep out the Tartar 
bandits, so that the Chinese might go on living in peace, 
cultivating the soil, obeying their parents, honoring scholar- 
ship, and remaining civilized while Europe went on destroy- 
ing her little civilizations as fast as she built them up. 

Williams could see why the purpose of the Great Wall 
should be misunderstood. It was intended for defense 
against a foreign enemy and the Chinese went at it in their 
own topsy-turvy way. The nations of the West know what 
real defense means. If you want to defend yourself against 
the Belgians, you invade Belgium and burn something. If 
you want to defend yourself against Mexico, you invade 
Mexico and grab something. If you want to defend your- 
self against Japan, you order three times as many Dread- 
noughts as the Japanese order — three is the recognized factor 
of safety in civilized countries; if you want to make your 
neighbor behave, you must be at least three times as strong 
as your neighbor. But the poor, muddle-headed Chinese, 
wishing to keep the Tartars out of China, could think of 
nothing better than to build a Wall to keep out the Tartars. 

The reader will suspect, by this time, that Williams is 
prejudiced in favor of China. He admits it. He con- 
siders the Chinese way of doing things extremely suited 
to the unconventional and complete life. In China, for 
example, if a soldier shows no stomach for fighting they 
make him a general, and by placing him behind the battle 
line minimize the temptation to run away. In China, if 



WISDOM OF THE EAST 189 

a school teacher cannot teach they give him charge of a 
whole school; and if he cannot maintain discipline they 
make him a district instructor, and if he still does not re- 
spond to treatment, they put him on the Board of Educa- 
tion. In China, if a college professor dislikes books they 
make him a college president. In China, if a motorman 
is continually running his train into the train ahead they 
remove the menace by making him a division superintend- 
ent, and if he shows no talent for organization they keep 
on promoting him out of harm's way until he may rise to 
be Public Service Commissioner and become perfectly in- 
nocuous. Always the Chinese idea is to conserve life and 
the social welfare, and at the same time maintain peace. 
Discharge an incompetent policeman and it will only create 
hard feeling. Make your policeman a police inspector and 
public order stands untouched. 

Or take the question of book-reviewing, said Williams. 
If the Chinese have the greatest body of serious literature 
of any nation and the smallest body of cheap fiction, it is 
because of their admirable system of payment for book- 
reviews. Instead of paying space rates to the writer of 
the review they pay space to the man whose book is re- 
viewed. The results are self-evident. Take a book of 
poems. In the course of time the book will receive two 
hundred reviews ranging from a quarter of a column to a 
column and a half, and will sell one hundred and fifty copies. 
Under our system the author receives royalties on one 
hundred and fifty copies to the amount of $23.50. Under 
the Chinese system the author receives six dollars a column 



1 9 o WILLIAMS 

for perhaps as much as one hundred columns of reviews, 
or six hundred dollars. Of course there is the question of 
what happens to the book-reviewers. But book-reviewers 
can live on very little, and in China especially the problem 
can hardly be a serious one. 



ON THE FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY 

UNFORTUNATE people who never read detective 
novels; or, worse still, those who pick up a mystery 
story and wonder what in the world any one can see in 
the book to keep him up till 1:30 in the morning with 
intermittent trips to the cold meat in the ice-box; or, worst 
of all, those who read the first chapter and then turn to 
the end to see who did the killing — such unfortunates think 
they are sufficiently kind when they describe the habit as 
a mild vice, not so hard on the family as liquor or drugs, 
but pernicious for the eyesight. They think they are 100 
per cent, charitable when they tolerate the practice as one 
form of escape from the realities of a difficult world. 

To such outsiders it is not given to understand that the 
" Mystery of the Chintz Room " or the " Smile of Gau- 
tama " is not an escape from the world but an initiation. 
They simply do not know that a selected course in read- 
ing from Conan Doyle to Carolyn Wells is a guide to the 
institutions, culture, and life outlook of the nations from 
China to Chili. I have set down below a mere fragment 
of the picture of humanity which may be built up by devot- 
ing not more than one evening a fortnight to this field of 
research hitherto neglected by the sociologists. The list 
might easily be multiplied by twenty. 

(1) The common belief that the British are an open' 

191 



i 9 2 WILLIAMS 

air people is utterly opposed to the facts. When a mem- 
ber of the British nobility or upper middle classes is found 
dead in his bed, with a mystic Oriental symbol scrawled 
in blood on the sheets, the mystery is rendered all the more 
baffling by the fact that all the windows are hermetically 
sealed, the door is locked from within, the transom has 
not been opened for years, and the ventilators are choked 
up — in fact, the plumbers were scheduled to arrive on the 
morning after the tragedy. If it were not for that grisly 
Oriental symbol, the obvious conclusion would be that the 
victim perished for lack of a breath of fresh air. Given 
such a bedroom — and nearly all fatal bedrooms in our 
fiction are of this kind — and it is a question which is the 
greater puzzle: how the murderer managed to get in and 
escape, or how the victim managed to keep alive until the 
murderer got at him. 

(2) Economy and resourcefulness are not among the 
virtues of the classes addicted to being murdered in their 
bedrooms or in their libraries. Twenty years after the 
tragedy the ghastly stain is still there on the floor. All 
attempts at erasing the spot in the course of twenty years 
have failed. What the scrubbing expense must have been, 
even if we reckon at a much lower rate than the prevailing 
scale of domestic wages to-day, is obvious. What the doc- 
tor's expenses have been in the way of treatment for 
nervous derangements inflicted by the ghastly stain on 
various members of the family is easily calculable. Yet 
no one in all these twenty years seems to have thought of 
replacing the blood-stained plank with a new one, at a 
trifling cost if done by day labor, and for a really insig- 



THE FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY 193 

nificant sum if ordered from a collapsible bungalow manu- 
facturer. 

(3) Week-end guests in British baronial mansions or in 
wealthy residences on Long Island drink too much black 
coffee before going to bed. Then they lie awake all night. 
That is why about 2 in the morning they hear that queer, 
shuffling footfall down the hall to which at the moment 
they attach no particular meaning and the dread signifi- 
cance of which they realize only next morning when the 
host is found dead on the library carpet with his eyes 
fixed in a ghastly stare on the ceiling. 

(4) The number of servants who have been in the employ 
of wealthy families addicted to violent deaths, for a period 
of forty years and up, and for whose fidelity the survivors 
can vouch as confidently as for their own husbands and 
wives, is truly astounding. Here, indeed, my friends, the 
psychoanalysts, may find the secret of my own passion for 
the mystery novel. Having in recent years never succeeded 
in keeping a house-worker for more than a couple of months, 
it is perfectly comprehensible how all my suppressed de- 
sires draw me to these faithful servants who stay forty 
years and then prefer to be the victims of cruel suspicion 
by the coroner rather than bring disgrace on the family. 
It is not overstating the case to say that if only I could 
find a plain cook who will stay with us for forty years, I 
am perfectly willing to take a chance at being found at 
the end of the period, upon the floor of my library with 
the ivory-handled paper cutter through my heart. For that 
matter, I should welcome an unsuccessful attempt at mur- 
der if the assassin is not apprehended until he has found 



i 9 4 WILLIAMS 

the paper-cutter. As it is, I have to tear the pages open 
by pulling with both hands from the top. 

(5) The victims of foul play in the best British and 
American families never, absolutely never, cut themselves 
when shaving, or scrape the skin, or raise a blister. That 
is how the investigator from Scotland Yard or from his 
private office in the Equitable Life Building is enabled to 
detect the cause of death in an almost imperceptible red 
spot under the chin which the local police have overlooked 
and which he immediately recognizes as the characteristic 
bite of the rare South American adder, Megaloptera Ban- 
danna. That method, if applied to the average man after 
he has shaved a second time for the theater, would suggest 
that he had been done to death by the greater part of the 
reptilian fauna of the South American forests. 

(6) Closely allied to the preceding topic, it appears that 
the principal occupation of the inhabitants of South America 
is the manufacture or the jealous preservation of the secret 
of instantaneously deadly poisons unknown to modern 
science and leaving no visible after-effects, excepting, of 
course, the corpse. 

(7) Insurance premiums on the lives of the British nobil- 
ity must be really enormous at Lloyd's. At least one-third 
of the members of the House of Lords are killed every 
year on the floor of their libraries or at the end of their 
yew walks close to the abandoned garden pavilion. But 
it is worse than that. If you have on the one hand the aged 
Duke of Beaucaire with an income of a million a year, and 
if you have on the other hand the third son of his fifth 
younger brother, who was wild at school and has lost him- 



THE FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY 195 

self somewhere on the Rand, and if you have no less than 
seven lives intervening between the scapegrace nephew and 
the ducal title, then these seven lives are sure to be wiped 
out by an earthquake or a fire or a marine disaster, and 
it only remains for the man who masquerades as the nephew 
(the real nephew having died of drink in Johannesburg) to 
come home and finish up the Duke. 

(8) Nearly everybody in a mystery novel is a consum- 
mate athlete. They escape the vigilance of the detective 
who is disguised as a taxi-driver, or the pursuing avengers, 
by getting into a taxicab at one door and leaving by the 
other while the cab is in motion. This will interest people 
coming home from the theater who have sometimes tried 
to open a taxi door from the inside. 

(9) The wealth of Burma and Tibet in priceless jewels 
would be enough to pay the German indemnity ten times 
over. An emerald like the Eye of Gautama, a sapphire like 
the Hope of Asoka, a ruby like the Doom of Dhalatpur — 
all of them stolen from the forehead of sacred images by 
European adventurers — would be enough to finance British 
trade with Russia for the next fifty years. The fields in 
Burma and Tibet are cultivated entirely by women. The 
male population consists solely of priests, who are off in 
the West for the purpose of recovering the hallowed jewels 
and visiting the vengeance of Brahmaputra on the sacri- 
legious plunderers. Usually they are disguised as elevator 
runners at the Savoy or the St. Regis. 

People who do not know think detective fiction is a vice, 
whereas, it is, like Mr. H. G. Wells, a liberal education. 



TRUMPET CALLS TO DUTY 

THERE was one thing in the President's address for 
which Williams was particularly grateful. At no 
point in his speech did President Harding summon him, 
Williams, to face the challenge of new responsibilities and 
new horizons. 

" But the President spoke at great length of the serious 
duties confronting the American people," I said. " At that 
busy moment it is not likely that Mr. Harding was thinking 
of you by name, but he must have included you with the 
rest of the one hundred and fifteen millions." 

" I said Challenge, not Duty," said Williams. And he 
went on to explain that he hoped, humbly, that he had 
always done his duty as a man and a citizen and so ex- 
pected to continue. But it irritated him constantly to be 
challenged about things. 

He said it had got so that he couldn't pick up his favorite 
weekly magazine without running slap into half a dozen 
challenges on as many pages. The opening paragraph 
wanted to know what he, Williams, was going to do about 
the challenge of Labor. On the first inside page he found 
himself right up against the challenge of a Free Mother- 
hood. Then in swift succession, Williams said, he had to 
face Jugo-Slavia's challenge to the conscience of human- 
kind, the challenge of the new scenery for Macbeth, the 
challenge of the new dances, the challenge of Oskaloosa's 

196 



TRUMPET CALLS TO DUTY 197 

successful experiment with the single tax, the challenge of 
the new spirit in the Church, the challenge of the new 
psychology, and the challenge of the new bran-and-mineral 
oil diet. 

Williams said he did not always want his weekly editor 
to agree with him; but in view of the cost of white paper 
he sometimes wondered how the editor could afford to 
challenge him so many times a week for 15 cents, or $5 
a year by subscription. 

" It is good for your digestion and your soul," I said, 
" to be brought up short like that. It keeps you from 
going soft with complacency. It saves you from turning 
into a fossil. It puts you on the defensive. It makes you 
put questions to yourself. It stimulates you." 

" Well, now, stimulate," said Williams. " I don't object 
to being stimulated by things I read. I am used to book 
reviews in which the reviewer says that the author is all 
wrong in his facts about dehydrated potatoes as a pre- 
ventive of war, but that the book is nevertheless a stim- 
ulating one. Now, I may be finicky, but while I don't 
mind being stimulated by the influence of dried potatoes 
on war, I resent being asked to meet the Challenge of the 
Dehydrated Potato. I don't like to have potatoes thrown 
up to me like that. It makes me want to throw them 
back." 

" That in itself is a good sign," I said. " It is much 
better than stagnation." 

Williams said it was just as bad in the monthly publica- 
tions. He picks up a magazine and naturally he turns first 
to the color advertisements. And the first thing he knows 



i 9 8 WILLIAMS 

some one is asking him how about that Amco Collapsible 
Double-Porcelained Kitchen Cabinet which he should have 
got for his wife long ago and so saved her 3,400 steps a 
day? Once upon a time the color pages used to suggest 
that it would be nice if Mrs. Williams owned an Amco 
Dishwasher. Later they began saying that it was Williams' 
duty to buy his wife an Amco. But nowadays they ask 
him whether he is meeting the challenge of the Amco. 
Sometimes the challenge is reinforced by a clear-eyed citi- 
zen with a close-cropped mustache who points his finger 
directly at Williams, who resents the gesture acutely. 

" It gets to you just the same," I said. 

" It does not," he said with quite a flash of spirit. " It 
only hurts Mrs. Williams. I should have bought her the 
Amco long ago if not for that donkey with the eloquent 
forefinger. And it's just as bad in the newspapers. Have 
I met the challenge of my helpless dependents by taking 
out a twenty-year endowment non-collapsible policy? Have 
I met the challenge of the Silent Reaper by making my 
will? Am I keeping faith with my lungs? Have I met 
the challenge of my pancreas? Everybody speaks to me 
as though I were walking in the midst of a crime wave." 

Williams said it was even worse than that. Once upon 
a time if he had a bad headache he took a dose of bromides 
and went to bed. But now it seems that to meet the chal- 
lenge of a headache you must get your tonsils cut out, and 
the proper way to repel a challenge from lumbago is to 
have your teeth pulled. And still worse, said Williams. 
Nowadays, if your head doesn't hurt it is a much more 
sinister thing than if it did, and if you work hard without 



TRUMPET CALLS TO DUTY 199 

getting tired, it means that something dreadful is going to 
happen. So it isn't enough to meet challenges as they 
come up. You must go out hunting for trouble. 

" As if I were a giddy knight-errant," said Williams, 
" instead of a busy man with no time for adventure." 

I told him that men like him who were too busy to do 
their duty by their higher selves and by humanity were 
a drag on progress. 

He was visibly hurt. He said that he was sincerely anx- 
ious to do his share in the building of a new world. His 
mind was far from closed to new ideas. But there must 
be a limit, mustn't there? After all, the elementary duties 
of the world have to be met. And where would we land if 
everybody knocked off work half a dozen times a day to 
meet the challenges addressed to his old-fashioned methods? 
If every farmer threw aside his plow to answer the chal- 
lenge of every new gasolene tractor, and if every school 
teacher threw her copybooks into the waste-basket to meet 
the challenge of the New Education, what would happen? 

He really did seem to have a point there, and I sug- 
gested that perhaps there was something in this knight- 
errant business he had just alluded to. There ought to be 
a special class in society whose business it should be to 
meet challenges as they crop up in the weeklies and monthly 
advertising sections. And while the scrap was on, the rest 
of us could stick to our work. 

He thought that might be a way out, but he was not 
very hopeful. He said that judging from the number of 
challenges on the market, the greater part of the adult work- 
ing population must be employed in answering them. And 



200 WILLIAMS 

he showed me a circular letter from the school he sends 
his children to. It was addressed to Parents in red ink and 
it said, " How Are You Answering the Challenge of Your 
Child? " 

" Well, now, child," said Williams. " You know how we 
all of us meet the challenge of our children. We let them 
have what they want. It comes hard to meet the chal- 
lenge of eight pairs of shoes a year, but we manage some- 
how. It comes harder to meet the challenge when they 
grow up a bit and want to be helped out in simple quad- 
ratics. But after all, if you feed a child and clothe him 
and look after him when he is ill and give him a few min- 
utes of your conversation at night and scatter a few books 
around the house for him to run into, what else is there 
to do in the way of meeting the challenge of childhood? " 

He went on to say that, as a matter of fact, this busi- 
ness of meeting the Challenge of the Child usually kept 
him and Mrs. Williams so occupied that they had little 
time left for answering the Challenge of Labor, and the 
New Spirit in the Church, and Jugo-Slavia, and the excess- 
profits tax, and the new bran compounds. 



THE REINDEER AND THE WILL TO BELIEVE 

FOR himself, Williams said, the problem of Santa 
Claus is no longer a pressing one. Catherine, his 
youngest, is well into her tenth year and has been for some 
time in possession of the real facts regarding the chimney 
and the reindeer. How she found out, he is not quite 
sure, but not from him or Mrs. Williams. Frankly, they 
were both a bit old-fashioned in this respect, and besides, 
they wouldn't have had the heart. 

It was different, said Williams, with his little nephew, 
who is six, and who learned the truth about St. Nicholas 
the other day from his mother, a thoroughly conscientious 
young woman who gives a great deal of time to her chil- 
dren. When the boy heard the bitter news that there is 
no Santa Claus, said Williams, he sat down on the floor 
and bawled. Williams thought it rather hard on the kid. 
They might have waited another year or two. 

" Not at all," I said. " The truth will never hurt a 
child." 

"Child! " said Williams. "A mere baby, with plenty 
of time ahead of him to shuffle off his illusions." 

" The besetting sin of the past," I said, " has been an 
excessive tolerance of Superstition among the very young. 
There was the Superstition of the reindeer down the chim- 
ney. There was the Superstition of the stork through the 
window. There was the Superstition of who made the 

201 



202 WILLIAMS 

earth and the sky. Happily we are getting rid of all 
of them." 

Williams sighed and said his sister-in-law was reading 
up on how birds and fishes are born, with an eye to his 
little nephew. 

" He can't begin to learn too soon/' I said. " Toleration 
of the present ignorance on the subject would be a crime 
against the child." 

" You are too hard," said Williams. 

" I am not too hard," I said. " I am quite ready to 
make exceptions. I believe, for instance, that after people 
have reached the voting age they should be allowed to 
believe in Santa Claus. That is the time when we must 
begin to respect people's illusions. That is the time when 
tolerance is more than virtue, when it becomes a necessity. 
Take, for instance, a severe case of indigestion." 

" Among voters, you mean? " said Williams. 

" Both among children and voters," I said. " Suppose 
your little nephew saw a green apple and was tempted 
and fell and proceeded to yowl his head off. Once upon 
a time we should have been sorry for his incoherent emo- 
tions. But your sister-in-law, being a modern mother, 
quite properly insists that the child is old enough to tell 
just where the pain is, and having received his dose, he 
should keep quiet. 

" Very well. But suppose your nephew grows up and 
publishes a volume of verse. How do the reviewers treat 
him? They say something like this: 

" ' There are even times when Sandburg is unsure about 
furnishing the clue to the half-realized and half-expressed 



THE REINDEER 203 

vagaries of the imagination. But though the meaning is 
not always clear, there is no mistaking his emotion.' 

" That is what I mean by tolerance. If you insisted 
that every poet at all times must say plainly what is the 
matter with him, what would be the outlook for a renascence 
of letters in America? " 

" Clever, but specious," said Williams. 

" Fact," I said; " it is being done every day. Or sup- 
pose your little nephew got hold of a pencil and paper 
and drew an elephant with three legs and a drastic reversal 
in the position of the tail and the trunk. Once upon a 
time we should have patted him on the head and left him 
to his illusions. To-day your sister-in-law will quite prop- 
erly point out his errors and not permit him to grow up 
with a distorted conception of the universe. Very well. 
Suppose now your nephew grows up and publishes ' Civili- 
zation in a Nutshell.' What do the reviewers say about 
it? They say this: 

" ' Mr. Williams, in his " Civilization in a Nutshell " 
has made the most notable contribution of the last twenty 
years to historical literature. It is true that Mr. Williams 
now and then is betrayed into statements which cannot 
altogether pass without challenge. He speaks of Athens 
as the capital of Indo-China and refers to Luther's early 
school days in New Orleans. There is a notable descrip- 
tion of Cleopatra calling up Mark Antony on the telephone, 
in which the amazing vividness of style does not alto- 
gether atone for the deviation from historic fact. Hardly 
less brilliant is the picture of a celebration of the feast 
of Ramadan at Mecca, where 200,000 devout Moslems 



204 WILLIAMS 

consume the flesh of io ; ooo swine, not counting sundries. 
It is true the Ramadan is a fast and not a feast, and that 
Mohammedans abhor pork, yet that narrative will stand 
high above anything in Gibbon or Prescott, in its thought- 
provoking quality.' " 

" I should think it would provoke a good deal of thought," 
said Williams. 

" That again is tolerance," I proceeded utterly disre- 
garding his interruption. "Or suppose your little nephew 
asserts that little boys are made out of chocolate, and little 
girls out of whipped cream. Your sister-in-law immediately, 
and quite properly, reminds him of the ascertained facts 
about the eggs of the hen and the turtle. Very well. But 
suppose your little nephew grows up and draws pictures of 
men apparently made out of second-hand anvils, and women 
apparently fashioned out of cantaloupe crates. What, then, 
do the critics say? They say that the like of Mr. Williams's 
men and women was never revealed to mortal eye, but that 
we must accept them as the inner vision of an ultimate 
reality. That again is tolerance." 

" Don't they sometimes call that sort of thing stimulat- 
ing? " said Williams. 

" Quite frequently," I said. " Sometimes it is stimulat- 
ing. Sometimes it is thought-provoking. Sometimes it is 
challenging. The point is this: If you should walk across 
Broadway in the accepted fashion, namely, on your feet, 
you would be making no original contribution to the soul- 
progress of the race. But if you stood on your head in front 
of the Woolworth Building, you would be a stimulating, 
thought-provoking, challenging phenomenon to ten thou- 



THE REINDEER 205 

sand people and the traffic cop. That is why we must be 
tolerant with grown-up people when they stand on their 
heads. But children can get on very well without Santa 
Claus." 

" I don't see the connection," said Williams. 

" It is simple," I said. " We have taken away Santa 
Claus from the children, but we grown-ups simply cannot 
go on without our Santas, that is to say, without our myths. 
Your little nephew is required, quite properly, to know why 
he does things. But if he grows up to be a Pragmatist 
he need not know where he is going so long as he is on his 
way; otherwise he stagnates. Your little nephew should 
be made to know the proper compass directions for an ele- 
phant's trunk and tail. But for us it is quite proper to be 
confronted with the thought-provoking statement that an 
elephant picks up peanuts with his tail ; otherwise we might 
not think at all. Your little nephew will soon learn that 2 
and 2 make 4. But as a challenge to the adult mind it is 
quite proper to say that 2 and 2 make 5; otherwise we 
might not be in line with the march of the human spirit. 
Our forward urge to-day is largely conditioned by a faith 
in Soviet paradises and super-Shakespeares coming down 
the chimney. Who pulls us forward to-day if not Dasher 
and Prancer and Bonder and Blitzen? Would you destroy 
our faith in them? " 

" All I can say is, it's queer," said Williams. " You are 
tolerant with full-grown men and women and you come 
down hard on my kid nephew." 

" We need tolerance more than he does," I said. 



THE FILING CABINET AND THE CHILD 

IN the afternoon of May 27 I was fingering through the 
tray marked Clippings on my desk, in search of some- 
thing Mr. Bernard Shaw said the other day, and I came 
across an unopened letter. The postmark was somewhere out 
West and the date was January 16. It occurred to me that 
if that letter was ever going to be answered it ought to be 
answered soon. Mr. Shaw might wait. He would soon be 
speaking again without question and one of two things would 
happen. He would either repeat himself, in which case 
there would be nothing lost by waiting; or he very prob- 
ably would contradict himself, in which case there would be 
a distinct gain in waiting. 

Besides, I was not at all sure that I should find the clip- 
ping with Mr. Shaw's remarks in the tray marked Clip- 
pings. That is the disadvantage of distributing things into 
trays marked Clippings, Incoming Mail, Outgoing Mail, 
Topic Suggestions, etc. It makes it so hard to find any- 
thing. Under the older system of letting things accumulate 
on the desk I am convinced that I should have come across 
that letter of January by the middle of March at the latest. 
Under the old system there came a time when the desk and 
the adjoining table and the surrounding chairs simply would 
hold no more. Once so often a general housecleaning became 
imperative, in the course of which pretty nearly everything 
was sure to turn up. 

206 



THE FILING CABINET 207 

Not so under the efficiency system. Everything being 
presumably just where it ought to be, it would show lack 
of confidence in efficiency methods to look for an unopened 
letter in the Clippings tray, for a pair of movie tickets in 
the Foreign Correspondence tray, or for the matches in the 
Topic Suggestions tray, where such things usually find their 
way. At the present moment I have a strong suspicion that 
Mr. Shaw's remarks are somewhere in the Odds and Ends 
tray, and I shall find them some day when I am hunting 
for an item on Footbinding in China. 

The letter of January 16, when opened, turned out to be 
a printed questionnaire from the Civic Forum of a certain 
Western town requesting a concise statement of my views 
on the New Education. It said that similar requests had 
gone out to three thousand other people all over the coun- 
try and the answers would be published in the form of a 
tabulated statement arranged by geographical divisions, 
States, and communities, ranked according to population 
and per capita wealth. 

The old system of letting things accumulate on the desk 
and the chairs instead of distributing them into trays had 
another advantage. It was a great time saver. By putting 
things into trays and clearing them out every week, one 
does things and answers things that need not be answered 
or done at all if one only waits long enough. People say, 
and quite rightly, that the history of the Great War cannot 
be written for a good many years to come because we are 
too near to the war for the right perspective. I think the 
same thing is true of Topic Suggestions and Incoming Mail. 
For instance, the other day in cleaning up a chair for a 



208 WILLIAMS 

visitor to sit on I came across a February magazine con- 
taining an article on the Sex War which I had been urgently 
requested to read by the young woman librarian uptown. 
As I glanced at the February article on Sex War on May 21, 
it no longer seemed necessary to read it. In the first place, 
what the author said wasn't true. In the second place, the 
author had published in the April number of another maga- 
zine an article on Woman Insurgent which contradicted all 
that he had said in February. So here was a distinct case 
of time saving. 

I wondered if the same thing wasn't true about the New 
Education. The letter asking for my views on the New 
Education was dated, as I have said, January 16. It was 
now May 27. It was obvious that if I tried to discuss the 
New Education as it was in the middle of January the 
views I expressed would now be obsolete. I was convinced 
that several revolutions in educational theory must have 
taken place since January, though how many and of what 
nature I could not say. All through March and the greater 
part of April I had been traveling about the country with 
only intermittent access to the newspapers. After that I 
had been away on vacation for some weeks and the only 
newspaper we could get was Mr. Hearst's Evening Journal 
of the day after to-morrow. 

My first impulse, on the basis of such newspaper reading 
as I was able to accomplish, would have been to say that 
nothing new in education had happened either by States or 
by geographical divisions. In Ogden, Utah, I discovered 
that the Captain and the Katzenjammer Kids were still at 
work on the problems confronting them in New York City 



THE FILING CABINET 209 

in April, 1903, and up in Maine in the summer of 191 1. In 
Denver I learned that the Joneses were still keeping it up, 
and down on Long Island I saw by the papers that in spite 
of the enormous increase in the cost of lumber and conse- 
quent stagnation in the building industry, the supply of 
rolling pins in the comic strips showed no sign of exhaus- 
tion. Popular education in a vital sense was apparently 
unchanged. 

Apparently. At heart I knew that unless the entire tem- 
per and habit of the country had altered, several pedagogical 
revolutions must have taken place without my being aware 
of the fact. I recalled how swift and radical hitherto have 
been the transformations of educational theory and practice. 
It was right that this should be so. We all know that the 
secret of education is to win and hold the attention of the 
child. And we all know that nothing so wins the attention 
of the child, or, for that matter, of the adult, as speed and 
variety. School can never become monotonous to the child 
who comes into class every morning not knowing whether 
teacher will be sitting on the floor in accordance with a new 
1 Psychology of the Child Soul or practising a New Approach 
into the Juvenile Mind by doing handsprings on the window 
sill. 

Whatever else we are, we are not a stagnant nation. Our 
educational systems flourish in rapid succession. Fre- 
quently several educational systems flourish side by side in 
the mind of the child and sometimes on top of each other. I 
have known of families with two children aged, say, twelve 
and nine and a half, in which the elder practises a system 
of penmanship sloping from left to right, while the younger 



210 WILLIAMS 

writes straight up and down. It is not a rare occurrence to 
find the same child who, happening to fall in the transition 
period between two systems of penmanship, will simultane- 
ously slant from left to right and go straight up and down. 
This involves a certain loss in legibility. 

Sometimes I cannot help wondering whether there isn't 
more than one reason for this unceasing experimentation in 
educational methods. No doubt the main reason is our de- 
sire to keep our children in line with progress. But also 
there is a certain restlessness on the part of the parents. 
" In other words," one old-fashioned critic has remarked, 
" it is not only the children who fidget." A zest for ex- 
perimentation is one of the notable traits of the modern tem- 
per, and one can always find a child to experiment upon. 

Consequently I must hasten to send in my views on the 
New Education to the Civic Forum out West; provided, 
that is, the letter doesn't get lost in the tray marked Out- 
going Mail — Urgent. 



VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 

I AM [he said] a reporter on a morning paper. One day 
my city editor hit upon an idea no one had ever had 
before. He sent me out to interview a number of citizens 
and find out what were the six best novels in all literature. 
I was to interview people of all sorts so as to make the result 
truly representative. 

I went to see the Collector of External Revenue, and 
asked him what were the six greatest novels ever written. 
He was glancing over the Past Performances on the sporting 
page, but he threw the paper aside, invited me to sit down, 
and gazed out of the window. 

" My favorite novel," he said, " has always been ' Tom 
Jones.' After that I should place ' Vanity Fair,' which I 
consider the best thing Dickens ever wrote; ' Ivanhoe,' 
' Huckleberry Finn ' — do you remember that story about 
the grave of Christopher Columbus? — ' Pere Goriot,' by that 
fellow — what's his name? " 

I suggested Balzac. 

" Bawlzac, that's the man, and ' Anna, Karenina,' by 
Tolstoy." 

I thanked him and he said, " Not at all," and picked up 
the sporting page and put his feet in their usual place on 
the desk. 

From him I went to Mr. Montrose Jones, the celebrated 
composer of " The Yucatan Rag." He pondered my ques- 

211 



212 WILLIAMS 

tion while the Italian bootblack finished polishing his 
shoes. 

" Never since I have thought on the subject," he said, 
" have I had the slightest doubt that ' Tom Jones ' holds 
first place among all works of imaginative literature. After 
that I should say my favorites are c Vanity Fair/ ' Ivanhoe,' 
.by Charles Dickens, ' Huckleberry Finn ' — do you recall 
that incident about the frog that was filled up with buck- 
shot? — and, let me see." 

I suggested " Pere Goriot," by Balzac. 
" Just what I was trying to recall," he said. " How many 
is that? Five? Well—" 

I suggested that " Anna Karenina," by Tolstoy, has been 
well thought of. 

" Right," he said. " These are the six authors whom I 
should never think of omitting from my library." 

I thanked him and he said, " Don't mention it," and rang 
for the barber and the manicure. From him I went to Miss 
Genevieve Desmond, principal woman in " The Girl from 
Gallipoli." 

She looked up from her copy of Munsey's. " It is always 
so hard to pick out the six best from a world of excellent 
novels," she said. " And, of course, I don't know what 
scholars and such people may think, but my own opinion 
is that Dickens's ' Tom Jones ' has never been surpassed. 
After that, but only a little bit behind, I should put 
' Huckleberry Finn ' — do you remember that story of the 
French waitress who could only understand English? — 
' Ivanhoe,' ' Vanity Fair ' " — she hesitated. 

" Of course," I said, " there is Balzac's " Pere Goriot." 



VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 213 

" Yes," she said, " and for sixth place I am undecided be- 
tween Tolstoy and ' Les Miserables.' " 

Such unanimity of opinion was gratifying, though I was 
afraid it would look rather monotonous in print. However, 
the truth was what I was after, and as a man of some edu- 
cation as distinguished from a mere reporter I was gratified 
at the wide diffusion of high literary taste. My last inter- 
view was with the Professor of Classical Paleography at the 
University. He put aside his copy of Plato in the original 
Greek and said: 

" The six novels which I have found most entrancing are 
' Sherlock Holmes,' ' Lady Audley's Secret,' Miss Corelli's 
' Romance of Two Worlds,' ' David Harum,' ' The Lady in 
White,' and ' The Last Days of Pompeii.' I invariably read 
myself to sleep with the last named book." 

The city editor, however, discarded Professor Blankley's 
list as evidently misrepresentative of the public's taste. 

I am all the more inclined to agree with the findings of 
my newspaper friend because they coincide with my own im- 
pressions. As far as I can recall, no city editor has had the 
original idea of interviewing people on the six greatest plays 
ever written, but it is my firm belief that a symposium on 
the subject, participated in by Mr. Charles F. Murphy, Tris 
Speaker, the Superintendent of the Municipal Lodging 
House, and Mr. Henry Ford, would give us the following 
list: " (Edipus Rex," " Hamlet," " The Merchant of Ven- 
ice," " Faust," " The Misanthrope," and " The School for 
Scandal," while a small minority represented by President 
Lowell and Colonel House would hold out for " Charley's 
Aunt " and " A Trip to Chinatown." 



214 WILLIAMS 

This is merely an opinion, but it is based on the fact that 
the Modern Theaters, which are continually being organized 
for the benefit of the working classes and the people of the 
East Side, devote themselves exclusively to the Greek drama, 
Synge, Wedekind, and Giacosa — the last name appearing in 
a variety of spellings — whereas President Wilson went only 
twice to the theater in New York, so far as I can recall, and 
the first time he went to see " The Pink Lady," and the sec- 
ond time he saw " Grumpy." Now, " Grumpy " was good 
fun, but, after all, there were serious plays running in New 
York at the time and I thought that Presidents of republics 
always went to the Comedie Francaise or some such high- 
brow institution. Precisely because we have no Comedie 
Francaise I thought the whole weight of official prestige 
should be thrown in favor of such timid approaches as we 
have made to the real thing. I imagine that M. Millerand, 
as a man, would rather go to see Fred Stone than Walter 
Hampden, but what are Presidents for if not for the pur- 
pose of pressing buttons at the opening of fairs, and laying 
cornerstones, and encouraging the drama? However, that 
is not the point. 

The point is rather that when it comes to picking the six 
best examples of anything, it is the plain people who stand 
up for the highest and sanest that men have written and 
practised; and it is the college professors who are always 
kicking over the traces. I can conceive no more dangerous 
force in nature than a professor of economics or sociology 
before a Board of Investigation. He is apt to say anything. 
Ask Tris Speaker, and he will tell you that " Tom Jones " 
is the best novel; that women on the whole should not vote; 



VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 215 

that the proper number of children in a modern family is 
six; that $1,200 a year is enough for any family to live on; 
that reading, writing, and arithmetic are the basis of every 
sound public-school education; and that divorce should be 
made much more difficult. Ask your professor of economics, 
and he will demand a minimum of $5,000 a year, the sus- 
pension of marriage, the abolition of the family — the future 
to be provided for perhaps by adopting the little boys and 
girls of the Chinese. Your baseball player would probably 
say that his favorite virtue is self-sacrifice, his favorite char- 
acter in history Abraham Lincoln, and his favorite recrea- 
tion taking the baby out in a perambulator. Professor 
Smith will say that his favorite virtue is insubordination, 
his favorite character is Caesar Borgia, and his favorite 
recreation is reading Ibsen's " Ghosts." 

The only thing that occurs to me is that both men would 
be just about equally sincere. In speaking for publication 
most of us say what we are expected to say, and if we don't 
our statements will be rectified in the interests of good copy. 
You can see for yourself that there would be nothing to a 
headline like " Baseball Player Likes Movies," or " College 
Professor Enjoys Hamlet." 



ADVENTURES OF THE LITERAL MINDED 
PEDESTRIAN 

NOT in the way of boastfulness, but on the contrary, 
with a definite sense of regret at his own shortcom- 
ings, he would allude now and then to his almost total lack 
of acquaintance with American Poetry of the Harding era. 
That fact was clearly established before we had covered half 
the distance up town. 

As we came out into the street and into the premature 
twilight of an afternoon heavy with the promise of snow he 
remarked on the fairy spectacle of the Hudson Terminal 
Building, the Telegraph Building and the eastern wall of 
Broadway, their fronts ablaze with golden lights. Only he 
did not call it fairyland. Neither did he speak of 5,000 
wax tapers glowing about the altars of business, as possibly 
Amy Lowell might. Neither did he speak of the wanton 
city, arraying herself in her night jewels, as Carl Sandburg 
might. 

Instead, he said: 

" Did it ever occur to you what a considerable part of 
business nowadays is done after business hours? During 
the day a person goes through a large number of motions 
which I suppose are necessary to business. He reads his 
letters in the morning and dictates answers, but only the 
less important ones. Those letters that call for considera- 
tion and important decisions he postpones till the early eve- 

216 



LITERAL MINDED PEDESTRIAN 217 

ning. He calls people up on the telephone and is called 
up on the telephone. He attends conferences in which some 
questions are settled but more questions are raised; these 
he postpones until evening to think over. He attends pro- 
longed luncheons at which business is discussed with very 
much the same result. He interviews customers and clients 
and gets the data for contracts and briefs which he develops 
after 5 o'clock, or maybe 6 o'clock. It is only when the 
secretaries and stenographers have gone home, and the tele- 
phone stops ringing, and people stop coming in to interrupt 
on the pretext of business, that a business man really finds 
the time to think and decide. The streets grow quiet, the 
office boys stop quarreling in the anteroom and go home, and 
the office takes on a religious hush. Or it is very much 
like my wife at home — when she has put the children to 
bed. That is the only time, she says, she can sit down and 
recall that she has a mind capable of functioning. You 
know how it is with your artists and authors. They do 
their work in summer up in the Maine woods. Well, we 
can't afford to get away for four months, so we stay in the 
office after six. It is rather interesting, isn't it, to think of 
several thousand men behind these brilliantly lighted win- 
dows just settling down to their day's work? " 

An important bit of business in connection with the Help 
Wanted, Female, columns took us to one of the newspaper 
offices on Park Row. We were for three or four minutes 
part of the solid, human mass surging homeward toward 
Brooklyn Bridge. But my companion did not identify him- 
self with the mighty Pulse Beat of the City. He did not, 
on the one hand, rise to Walt Whitman's joy in the myriad 



2i 8 WILLIAMS 

faces of Mannahatta. Neither did he succumb to a latter- 
day hatred for the brutal machine called Downtown which 
sucks in its human fuel every morning and spews out the 
ashes and cinders every evening — across Brooklyn Bridge. 

He said: 

" Brooklyn is really an extraordinary place. It is full of 
all kinds of people, whereas you fellows in the writing line 
are in the habit of speaking of the Brooklyn type. There 
isn't such a type. Or why would they be buying half a 
dozen different evening papers? Do you see how the news- 
boy knows them as they come at him and jerks out his 
Journal or World or Globe or Mail? And if he doesn't rec- 
ognize you, see what he does. He sizes you up. He shoots 
just one glance at you and whips out a Sun from under his 
left arm. Have you ever stopped to think what difference 
it makes whether a Brooklyn man asks for a World or a 
Sun? Not to mention the Eagle. It means that he feels 
one way or another about the Treaty, and Mr. Harding, 
and the labor unions, and Fontaine Fox, and Maurice Ket- 
ten, and the Bolsheviks, and almost anything you can think 
of. It is really striking what an enormous number of people 
live in Brooklyn." 

Strange, I thought, that a man should be walking in the 
crowd and yet be so apparently dull to the Soul of the 
Crowd, as it is frequently called in the weekly publications 
■ — should be so dull to the colossal Rhythm of Democracy. 
That was his neglected education. 

As we crossed City Hall Park and turned up Broadway 
he failed to remark on the pillar of mist which is Broadway 
in the distance between its high walls. He observed that 



LITERAL MINDED PEDESTRIAN 219 

the streets were on the whole cleaner than they used to be. 
He thought that the city as a whole was improving in that 
respect, and he wondered whether we oughtn't to attribute 
to this fact the steadily decreasing rate in infant mortality. 
He thought the automobile killings were horrible, and sug- 
gested the time might soon come when motor traffic below 
Fourteenth Street would be prohibited, at least passenger 
traffic. He did not see that the business of the city would 
come to a standstill if everybody had to use the Subway or 
the " L " down town. He would prohibit the use of the 
automobile for passengers everywhere on the East Side. No 
point in that section is more than a ten-minute walk from 
the "L" and the children had to play somewhere. 

A little above Canal Street we struck the southward bound 
crowd, from the garment factories. Though it was quite 
a task making headway against the crowd, he never once 
spoke of ourselves as breasting the torrent of weary life 
flowing back from the factories towards the tenements. I 
suppose if the man's life depended on it he could not have 
framed a generalization or a metaphor. The gift for iden- 
tifying himself with the Life Forces was denied him. 

He said, instead: 

" If I came home as tired as most of these girls and men 
do, I think all I could manage would be just to climb into 
bed. I suppose some of them do, for that matter. And I 
imagine there are a good many others who have tasks await- 
ing them at home, like preparing supper, or a sick mother 
to look after, or letters to answer from unhappy relatives out 
in Poland, or Calabria, or Armenia even. But just by look- 
ing I couldn't tell which of these girls are going home to a 



220 WILLIAMS 

cheerless night, and which of them have engagements for 
the theater, or the movies, or a Socialist meeting, of which 
I understand there are a great many. Frequently it is a 
combination meeting, concert and ball. There is also a good 
deal of miscellaneous dancing on the East Side, and there 
are the singing societies and lectures; and of course the 
evening schools." 

He thought there were a great many people on the East 
Side. 

Concerning Central Park he did not say that it was an 
innocent smile on the painted face of Babylon. He said 
that the electric lights were a hardship on young people 
who had no other place to do their courting. We parted 
at Seventy-second Street. 

" It has been an experience," I said. 

" Yes," he said, " it was a nice walk." 



OUR HIGHER SELVES 

WILLIAMS was not at all sure that thirty minutes a 
day devoted to " 10,000 Notable Facts," in limp 
leather binding, would equip a man for the purposes of so- 
cial intercourse. 

" You think," I said, " that 10,000 facts are not enough 
to hold the ladies spellbound? " 

Williams said 10,000 facts were too much. He thought 
ten facts would be much better, and two or three would be 
ideal. And he cited a recent experience. 

He said it was just an ordinarily intelligent after-dinner 
conversation. It touched, among other things, on two hemi- 
spheres, two sexes, three best-selling novels, two significant 
plays, three generations (the young, the young at heart, and 
the old), three epochs in history (ancient, medieval, and 
modern), two possible ways of paying off the German in- 
demnity, two divorce cases in the newspapers, examined not 
at all for their sordid details but for their significance as so- 
cial documents, two striking examples of spiritistic phenom- 
ena, three possible solutions for the Russian problem, with 
a few casual references to Shantung, literary censorship, and 
Eugene Debs. 

I suggested that, even at that rate, 10,000 facts, if judi- 
ciously employed, might suffice. 

" The trouble," said Williams, " is that half of the com- 
pany seemed to have mastered 5,000 facts out of the 10,000. 

221 



221 WILLIAMS 

and the other half of the company had the other 5,000 at 
their finger tips. And so their minds did not meet." 

In the case of German reparations, said Williams, it hap- 
pened that the lady on his left was convinced that the Allied 
policy was headed straight for disaster and she set out to 
prove it to a man across the table who was of the opinion 
that Lloyd George was not half severe enough. She called 
his attention to a special dispatch in the New York Call 
which showed that Germany had already paid, in coal and 
ferro-manganese, more than twice the value of all the fac- 
tories destroyed in Northern France. 

The gentleman across the table replied that he made it a 
point not to read the Call, as he abhorred its political views 
and distrusted its news. On the other hand, he begged to 
remind her of a recent item in the New York Times which 
showed that Germany was secretly drilling an army of a mil- 
lion men for whom Krupps was busy night and day provid- 
ing heavy guns and trench mortars. The lady said that she 
never believed anything she saw in the Times touching on 
either Germany or Russia. What really mattered, she went 
on to say, was the present status of the Silesian sugar beet 
refineries as described on page 13, column 6, of the Phila- 
delphia Public Ledger, just below the victrola ad. Her 
opponent replied that the Public Ledger seldom came his 
way, but that a letter to the editor of the Burlington (Iowa) 
Hawkeye revealed an extraordinary increase in the output 
of cotton hosiery at Dresden and Leipzig which must be 
read in connection with the claims put forward by the Ger- 
mans in London. Williams's neighbor retorted that the 
Hawkeye letter was news to her, even assuming that it was 



OUR HIGHER SELVES 223 

genuine and that the writer knew what he was talking about. 

Williams said that if there is anything more amazing than 
the intimate knowledge of the inner history of the court of 
Montenegro displayed by some people, it is their ignorance 
of who is the present Governor of New York State. The 
trouble with facts would seem to be the same as with farm 
crops. The total output is enormous, but the distribution is 
exceedingly uneven. Not long ago he met an ambitious 
young school teacher from one of the high schools who had 
never heard of G. K. Chesterton. Only the other day a 
New York Alderman said that the name of Einstein was 
new to him. Surely, said Williams, that charming school- 
marm must sometimes glance through the department store 
advertisements, and that Alderman must look at the stock 
quotations or the sporting page. In that case, how could 
they have missed Chesterton and Einstein? It made him 
wonder if anybody ever does read the newspapers. 

I suggested that people do, but remember only what they 
wish to. 

" But that," said Williams, " is precisely the trouble with 
10,000 Facts. It permits too wide a choice. There is so 
much for everybody to know that nearly everybody in any 
group of intelligent people knows something different. You 
would suppose that if there is any subject on which there 
was a common fund of information it would be the movies. 
But when we took up, at this same dinner party, the in- 
fluence of motion pictures on popular morals, we ran up 
against extraordinary differences not in opinion, which would 
be natural enough, but in facts." 

Williams believes, and so told the company at dinner, 



224 WILLIAMS 

that the movie is undermining civilization. He told them 
that just now on his way up from the subway station he had 
walked five blocks, and he thought he was walking through 
Babylon at its worst. One movie theater offered to tell 
him, for the modest sum of 25 cents, the Truth About Hus- 
bands. Half a block further on he could have found out 
everything about the Price Women Pay. After that it was 
something about the Sins of the Fathers. After that it was 
one long gallery in which everything was wrong — wives, 
husbands, children, doctors, clergymen, railroad presidents. 
Williams said he never goes to the movies, but how in the 
face of the facts could the thing be anything but a menace? 

The man across the table who knew all about Lloyd 
George, leaned forward and asked Williams if he had seen 
the screen version of " Way Down East." 

" No," said Williams. 

" Or ' Over the Hill '? " 

" No," said Williams. 

" Or ' Black Beauty '? " 

"No," said Williams; and being on the whole, of a dis- 
position far from bigotry or prejudice, he could not help 
wondering whether he ought not to have made himself safer 
on the moral facts of the movie problem. But with fifteen 
million linear feet of film released every year, what was a 
man to do? 

I told him that I failed to see that he had any cause for 
regret. 

" Not regret talking for ten minutes at a stretch about 
something I knew very little about? " said Williams. 

It seemed absurd that I should have to point out to Wil- 



OUR HIGHER SELVES 225 

liams the fundamental mistake he was making. He was con- 
fusing facts with conversation; at least as conversation is 
understood and practised by us of the intelligent classes. 
I pointed out to him that it was different with the lower 
classes, whose conversation is built upon a few universal 
facts like the weather, or food profiteers, or children, or the 
common physical ailments. As a result, the dinner-talk of 
the masses is apt to be somewhat lacking in dramatic con- 
flict, but it does manage to get fairly close to the truth of 
things. 

" I don't see why you say the lower classes," said Wil- 
liams. 

" Then you did get around to the weather? " I said. 

Williams said that they got through with the war of the 
sexes and the German indemnity by 9 o'clock, when some 
one brought up the subject of an open winter. Thereupon 
his hostess smiled happily at her husband and everybody 
began to agree with everybody else. When Williams said 
good-by at 10:30, the lady who knew all about Lenin's agri- 
cultural reforms in Turkestan was telling the man who knew 
everything about Krupps' secret dividends that we had yet 
to discover a substitute for the old mustard plaster in the 
treatment of elementary colds. Williams said he had to 
tear himself away. 



THE DANGEROUS AGE 

WE had been talking about London, and the Allies and 
the Germans, and two hundred and twenty-six bil- 
lion marks, and seven and a half billion dollars, and twenty- 
four million tons of coal, and 12 per cent, on German ex- 
ports, and discount at 8^ per cent., and we had now and 
then mixed up tons of coal with marks, and discount with 
compound interest, but, on the whole, not much more seri- 
ously than the London Conference did. And so we got back 
to the original Peace Treaty. 

" What, as a matter of fact," said Williams, " do you 
think was the real cause of the mess at Versailles? " 

" I am the only one in town who isn't quite sure," I said. 
" But sometimes I am inclined to think it was because they 
had too many young men at the Peace Conference." 

" The other way about, you mean," said Williams. 

" What my meaning may ultimately turn out to be, time 
alone can show," I said, somewhat impatiently. " But for 
the present I do mean what I say. They had too many 
young men at Paris and not enough old men." 

" Oh," said Williams, and stared out of the window. I 
was uncertahi whether he was doubtful about my intelli- 
gence or my sincerity, but assumed it was the latter, and so 
refused to lose my temper. 

" My conclusions," I said, " are based on the operations 
of pure reason. What was the main trouble at the Peace 

226 



THE DANGEROUS AGE 227 

Conference? Obviously, this, that the men who made the 
Treaty refused to look facts in the face. They drew up a 
system of European frontiers that cannot possibly endure. 
They created little nations that cannot possibly survive. 
They imposed upon Germany an indemnity that she cannot 
possibly pay. They refused to profit by the lessons of the 
past. They insisted on cutting off their noses to spite their 
faces. They were passionate, intolerant, impatient of 
mathematics, self-contradictory, violently absurd." 

" They were a set of wicked old men," said Williams. 

" I am arguing from pure reason," I said. " And pure 
reason indicates that all the qualities I have enumerated 
are the vices of youth. Who is it that refuses to acknowl- 
edge facts or snaps his fingers at the facts? Who is it that 
insists on abstract rights even if those rights have been 
asleep for a hundred years? Who is it that insists on un- 
doing ancient wrongs even if they are so ancient as to have 
become established rights? Who is it that refuses to become 
reconciled with evil, even after it has been defeated? The 
answer is Youth. The trouble with Clemenceau, Lloyd 
George, and Woodrow Wilson was apparently that they 
were fifty years too young — by pure reason." 

" They were spiteful old men," said Williams. 

" Then they must have been highly exceptional old men," 
I said. " Far be it from me to say anything in justification 
of the old. But their vices, as I have usually studied them 
in the columns of the radical press and in the indictments 
written by young men for the Atlantic Monthly, are not the 
ones exhibited at Versailles. Take, for instance, the old 
men who are such a drag on progress in our own country, a 



228 WILLIAMS 

drag on social reconstruction, on the freer and happier life, 
on the freer and better literature and art. Why are they a 
drag? Not because they are spiteful but because they are 
timid; because they insist on letting well enough alone; be- 
cause they are all for postponing things, and patching things 
up, and for saying ' Hush, hush.' If you get an old man 
into a corner, he will make concessions. He will not die 
for an ideal. In other words, he will be reasonable. But 
none of these things happened at Versailles. Therefore it 
is plain that the Treaty must have been written by the 
young men. For it is the young who insist on having their 
own way." 

" They brought on tKe war," said Williams. 

" The young men did? " I said. 

" No, the old men," said Williams. " They merely sent 
out the young men to do the fighting." 

" Since the young men, as a rule, are the sons of the old 
men," I said, " I have always found it rather hard to be- 
lieve that the old men went deliberately at the business of 
murdering the young men. Once upon a time it used to be 
said that it was the young men in the armies who were eager 
for war. To put it rather brutally, a good sized war, with 
heavy casualties, meant advancement for the junior officers. 
In peace times the world moves on, as a rule, by the law of 
seniority. War is, as the young see it, a big boost for the 
merit system. Speaking again from pure reason, who do 
you imagine would be the more eager for a scrap, the middle- 
aged colonel and the elderly brigadier, who are within hail- 
ing distance of a comfortable retiring pension, or the young 
second lieutenant, who cannot afford to get married on his 



THE DANGEROUS AGE 329 

salary? You have read Edward Bok's autobiography, of 
course? " 

Williams said he had not got around to it, being still en- 
gaged upon the second volume of H. G. Wells. 

" Bok knows less about the paleozoic fauna than Wells," 
I said; " but he knows a great deal more about people to- 
day. Bok has pointed out the real trouble with the old men 
in these United States. They refuse to retire from business, 
as they should, at the age of fifty or thereabouts. This 
means that they have no leisure to taste of other things in 
life than business, and no leisure to look back and pass 
judgment upon what they have been doing. But worst of 
all, it means that they keep young men out of the jobs which 
the young ought to have for their own sake and for the 
greater profit of humanity. The old men stick around and 
get in the way." 

" And what have I been saying? " said Williams. 

" You have been saying just the opposite. You have 
been saying that the old men are wicked; whereas they are 
only a nuisance. They are not an active force for evil. 
They just potter around. Mr. Wells gets it all wrong when 
he sneers at the old men of the tribe. It isn't the old men 
of the tribe who make wars; it's the young bucks of the 
tribe. The veterans sit around the campfire and tell stories 
about how brave they were when they were young and how 
there are no such warriors now, and that on the whole it 
would be better not to fight, and how, at least, the witch- 
doctors ought to be consulted first and the Sacred Fuzzy- 
Wuzzy and the August Oracle and the Sanctimonious Ibises. 
It is the young fellows who say, ' Let us set out without 



230 WILLIAMS 

loss of time and bash in the face of the hereditary enemy.' 
So this is what you have to decide before you are quite sure 
that the old men are responsible for the mischief at Ver- 
sailles. You must decide whether old men are a danger or 
only a bore." 

" The need at Versailles was for a new vision, a generous 
response to the demands of a new age," said the voice of 
Williams's favorite editorial writer, speaking through the 
mouth of Williams. 

" If by generous you mean a mind and heart open to 
new, bold ideas — " I said. 

" I do mean that," said Williams. 

" Then youth is generous," I said. " But if by generous 
you mean that youth is kindly, tolerant, and understand- 
ing-" 

" I mean that, too," said Williams. 

" Then youth is nothing of the kind," I said. " For the 
first set of virtues excludes the second set. To the extent 
that youth is aflame with an ideal, it will not endure com- 
promise with any other ideal. Only a cynical old man will 
do that. And as for the motive behind youth's idealism I 
suspect you will often find it to be self-interest. After all, 
there is no particular merit in youth's wanting to go for- 
ward; that's where the youth belongs. Youth wants the 
new for the same reason that old age clings to the old ; there 
is its opportunity. If I wanted to be really harsh I might 
say that youth wants the new because the old has already 
been preempted by the old men. Like free verse or the 
small-town novel." 



THE DANGEROUS AGE 231 

" When it comes to making a point I prefer the old way 
of saying what a person means," said Williams. 

" It is simple," I said. " Young people are now writing 
unrimed lines because they think that is the better and 
truer poetry. But the true reason is, of course, that the old 
crowd has done very well with rimed verse, and competition 
for a newcomer is much easier by striking out in a new field. 
And because the old people have done very well with the 
sugary novel the young folks have gone in for mustard and 
pepper. Suppose William Dean Howells had written like 
Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser would now be writing like 
Howells — if he knew how. So when you hear of youth 
knocking on the door, don't think only of the old man on the 
inside. Remember, after all, that the other fellow is bent 
upon getting in. That's why he knocks." 

" He ought to get in," said Williams. 

" By all means," I said. " That's where Edward Bok is 
so profoundly right. And that is where the Peace Confer- 
ence made a mistake. If there really were no young men 
there, they should have let the young men in." 

" What would have happened? " said Williams. 

" The young men would probably have taken an extra 
slice out of Germany and an extra twenty or thirty billion 
dollars," I said. 



PATERNAL AFFECTION— A PERIL 

"TT THAT we need," said Williams, " is a law estab- 

V V lishing a speed limit on a man's duty to his fam- 
ily. Violation of the law should be a penal offense." 

" We need it? " I said. 

" Would I be suggesting it if we didn't? " he said. " Look 
at the stuff in your scandal columns. Ten times more mis- 
chief is done by men who feel they owe it to their families 
than by men who let their families starve. What I mean is 
a law that will prohibit unreasonable speeding in the matter 
of providing for the future of your children. It might be 
scientifically graduated. For instance, in the city the maxi- 
mum should be, say, twenty thousand dollars for a family 
of three children. When a man has laid aside that sum to 
distribute among his offspring when they are twenty-one, 
he should be prohibited from engaging in any occupation 
that promises to carry him beyond that amount. In the 
country the maximum might be put at $15,000, or perhaps a 
bit lower. The size of a man's family will, of course, have 
to be taken into account. I should think $6,500 for every 
son and daughter in the city and $5,000 in the country and 
towns of less than fifty thousand population would be about 
the right figure. You'll agree to that." 

"I will agree," I said, " provided I find out what you are 
driving at." 

" But I've told you," said Williams. " Look at your scan- 

233 



PATERNAL AFFECTION— A PERIL 233 

dal and gossip columns. Here's an eminent clergyman hold- 
ing down one of the best-paying ecclesiastical jobs in the 
country. He's saved up quite a bit of money; so much, in 
fact, that he is ashamed to reveal the exact amount. What 
does he do? Does he go at his pastoral work harder than 
ever because his salary has enabled him to lay aside some- 
thing for a good many rainy days? No. He goes into tim- 
ber schemes and gets into a mess, loses his money, signs a 
lot of promissory notes, quarrels with his friends, and so 
down and down till he lands on the lecture platform. And 
the cause of it all? His duty to his family. A speed-limit 
law like the one I have suggested would have kept this man 
from making a wreck of his own life and smashing the ideals 
of a great many good people. Now do you see the point? " 

I said yes, but he went on. 

" Here's another case. This time it is not scandal, but 
a social crime. Here's an eminent judge. He is an honor 
to the law and a force for social righteousness. He works 
for $10,000 a year, perhaps for as much as $15,000, or 
$17,500. His position is secure. We have really reached 
the point where an honest and able judge is fairly sure of re- 
election or reappointment for a long term of years. Sud- 
denly he resigns and goes into private practice, because he 
owes it to his family. Here's the Governor of a State. His 
election has been the beginning of what you might call a 
moral awakening. He has had to fight hard, but the people 
are with him, and every day he remains in office the State is 
a better place to live in. Then he resigns because the ex- 
penses of the office are heavy, and he goes into private prac- 
tice to insure the future of his children. Here's a useful bu- 



234 WILLIAMS 

reau chief at Washington. He has done excellent work for 
the country, he has influence, popularity, everything. Then 
a fashion magazine offers him a million dollars a year to be 
its contributing editor, and he throws up his job because he 
owes it to his family. If this is so, you will agree with me 
that the family is a moral danger and a social menace." 

" People will persist in loving their young," I said. 

" They should be made not to," said Williams. " Mind 
you, I am not arguing now for the old-fashioned notion that 
the best legacy a man can leave to his children is poverty 
and an honest name. Honesty and poverty by themselves 
are rather a drug on the market. Though even there one 
might put up an argument. I should imagine that being the 
college-bred eldest son of a Chief Justice who died leaving 
an estate of $2,477 w i tn no debts is a fairly good start in 
life. But if that young man's father, in addition to good 
health, a good name, and a college education, leaves him, 
say, $6,500, what more would he want? He can go into 
business with that or he can spend three years abroad and 
make himself a pretty good chemist or pathologist or eth- 
nologist or whatever he would like to be. A fortune of 
$6,500 in the city and $5,000 in the country, a sound body, 
a decently trained mind — that's as much as the President 
of the United States owes as a duty to any one of his chil- 
dren." 

" The simple life," I said. 

" The honest and effective life," he said. " When those 
men speak of their duty to their families, what is it they 
think of? Automobiles for the young man at college, Eu- 
rope every other year, Palm Beach alternate years, and in 



PATERNAL AFFECTION— A PERIL 235 

the end — I mean the father's end — the assurance for his chil- 
dren of a steady income, obviating all necessity of work. 
The odd thing is that it is your multimillionaires who have 
the soundest ideas regarding what they owe to their chil- 
dren. If your father is a railroad king, he puts you to work 
in one of his freight stations as soon as you graduate; and 
if he is a money king, he puts you behind a desk in front 
of a ledger and a cash book." 

" That," I said, " proves what I meant by the simple life. 
Only the very rich can afford it. The man of moderate 
means knows what it costs to be simple and useful and he 
tries to save his children from the fate." 

" I wonder," said Williams, " whether they really mean 
what they say when they speak of one's duty to one's fam- 
ily." 

"What becomes of your argument if they don't? " 

"There is a story by Edith Wharton," he said. "It's 
called ' The Pelican,' I think. I haven't read it myself, but 
I remember a book reviewer's account of it. That isn't 
much, but it's something. It's about a woman who is left a 
widow with one child, a boy, and no money to speak of. To 
support the boy she goes on the lecture platform. She 
makes a success of it ; in part her success is due to the fact, 
which she is rather careful to publish, that she is doing it 
all for her son. The boy grows up and goes into business 
and makes his way and is perfectly competent to take care 
of his mother, not to speak of himself. But his mother 
keeps on lecturing. The fact is, she likes the work, the ex- 
citement, the publicity, and the tradition of self-sacrificing 
mother-love. The son resents being made an object of un- 



236 WILLIAMS 

necessary charity even if it is his own mother. 1 don't re- 
call how it all ends, but you see the point." 

I said I did, but he insisted on driving it in. 

" I sometimes suspect that these men who go in for money 
because they owe it as a duty to their children really like 
the business of money-making in itself, the fun of it and the 
things that come with money. It's rather unfair to put it all 
up to one's children." 

" How about your speed law then? " I said. 

" Well," he said, " we might indict them for false repre- 
sentation." 



SURGICAL 

WILLIAMS said he wondered whether people weren't 
going too far in all this talk about revitalized con- 
stitutions and that sort of thing. He said he could go back 
a dozen years and recall at least a dozen infallible schemes 
for reinvigorating the American constitution, and he didn't 
see that we were any better off. 

" You refer," I said, " to the encroachment of the Execu- 
tive upon the Legislative department? " 

" No," said Williams, " I was thinking of the interstitial 
gland." 

Williams said there was a time not so many years ago 
when the diseases of old age could be warded off and life 
could be indefinitely prolonged by walking barefoot in the 
grass. The method was quite simple. You got up soon after 
sunrise and walked for half an hour in the dew-laden grass. 
Then you took Indian club exercises in your bedroom and 
breakfasted lightly on toast and coffee without sugar. You 
gave up smoking two hours before and after every meal and 
in public conveyances. You cut out all pastries and red 
meats for lunch, to which meal you devoted at least an hour, 
chewing your food carefully, and finishing off with a half- 
mile walk. The same process was followed for dinner, ex- 
cept that you walked two miles and a half. In the course 
of the day it was desirable to drink at least a dozen glasses 
of water. Bedtime was at 9. People who tried it must 

237 



238 WILLIAMS 

have derived much good from the barefoot treatment, but, 
somehow or other, it has passed out of fashion. 

" You don't suppose," I said, " it was because people felt 
that even if life were indefinitely prolonged it would be too 
short for this sort of program? " 

" It may be," said Williams. " Subsequently people set 
out to combat old age with buttermilk. The idea was not 
a bad one. You got up shortly after sunrise, took light ex- 
ercise, had your cold tub, and breakfasted moderately on 
toast and two glasses of buttermilk. The use of tobacco 
was prohibited for an hour and a half after breakfast and 
the same period before lunch, which consisted of buttermilk, 
toast, and a bit of white meat if you felt you must have 
meat. After lunch you walked half a mile. The same proc- 
ess held good for dinner, except that you were supposed to 
walk two and a half miles. The best results were obtained 
if the patient drank a dozen glasses of water in the course 
of the day, a glass of hot water immediately after rising 
and another before retiring. Bedtime was at 9. I have 
known this treatment to do much good. People who had 
been made twenty years younger by walking barefoot in 
the grass told me they had never felt so young as after they 
had tried buttermilk. And yet buttermilk has gone out." 

" You don't imagine people were frightened by the 
thought of being yanked back into helpless infancy if they 
kept it up? " I said. 

" Perhaps," said Williams. " Well, after that we had the 
violet ray, and after that bran and mineral oil. I suppose 
you know all about them? " 

" Not in detail," I said, " but I assume it means getting 



SURGICAL 239 

up at 5:30, massaging your scalp with the violet ray, In- 
dian clubs, mixing bran with your oatmeal, cutting down to 
three cigarettes a day, walking four and a half miles, omit- 
ting pastry and sugar, and going to bed at 9." 

" That's pretty near the idea," said Williams, " except 
that you have omitted the hot water morning and evening 
and a dozen glasses of spring water in the course of the day. 
And now it is the interstitial gland." 

" I fail to see the parallel," I said. " The cures you have 
mentioned were all essentially hygienic. This other thing 
is a radical experiment in surgery. They take the inter- 
stitial gland from the body of an ape and transplant it into 
the human patient — " 

" I know all that," said Williams, " but here is the suspi- 
cion I can't get rid of. After they have inserted the inter- 
stitial gland into your system, will they make you get up at 
sunrise and cut out tobacco and French pastry and drink 
a bucket of cold water? Personally I don't believe in 
miracles. I don't believe you can cure constitutional break- 
down by taking out something here and inserting it there so 
that the next time a treaty of peace comes up you find every 
organ coordinating perfectly with every other organ. That's 
a problem of a different nature." 

" You refer to the increase of degenerative diseases among 
men over fifty? " I said. 

" No," said Williams, " I mean the encroachment of the 
Executive upon the powers of the Senate." 

" That's flippancy," I said. " If you had made even a 
superficial study of Dr. Voronoff's experiments with the in- 
terstitial gland you would think differently. The method of 



2 4 o WILLIAMS 

transplantation, as a matter of fact, is not new. For some 
time before Dr. Voronoff announced his discovery — " 

"What is the interstitial gland? " said Williams. 

" For some time before Dr. Voronoff announced his dis- 
covery," I continued, " extraordinary results had already 
been attained with the thyroid gland. By means of injec- 
tions into the thyroid gland it has been found possible to 
add several inches to the stature of undersized children. In 
the same way — " 

" Just where is the thyroid gland located? " said Wil- 
liams. 

" In the same way," I continued, " it has been found pos- 
sible to stimulate the growth of intelligence in children by 
manipulation of the pituitary gland, either through the re- 
moval of pressure on the gland or the application of pressure 
— I don't at the moment recall which." 

" The pituitary gland is somewhere in the throat, isn't 
it? " said Williams. 

" And as to revitalizing the constitutional powers of the 
Senate," I said, " I don't believe that a surgical operation 
would work miracles, though I admit the case calls for heroic 
treatment. But on the other hand, light exercise and rest — " 

" And here's what I am thinking about," said Williams. 
" How about the sophomores at Yale? " 

" Sophomores? Yale? " I said. 

" You will recall," he said, " that whenever anything new 
comes up, like walking in the grass or the interstitial gland 
or the carbonic contents of lime juice, they try it out on the 
sophomores. They lock them up in an ice box or put them 
into a bath tub and feed them on lime juice or recite to them 



SURGICAL 241 

the Gettysburg Address and see whether the water spills 
over. The only thing they haven't tried on sophomores is 
filling them up with Latin and mathematics and seeing what 
happens. Or do you think that the interstitial gland has no 
effect on the intelligence? " 

" Sophomores, you mean? " I said. 

61 1 was thinking of the Senate," said Williams. 



STANDING ROOM ONLY 

IN the several hundred books on the Drama more or less, 
which have been published since the first of January, 
you will look in vain for any allusion to the one great dis- 
covery about the theater made in recent years. Mr. Gran- 
ville Barker was the discoverer. Even Mr. Barker gives 
you only half the truth, but that means at least 48 per cent, 
more truth than you find in the average book on the drama. 
It happened at a dinner of university presidents, editors, 
and financiers, and this is what Mr. Barker said: 

" When I think of the millions of people who get from 
the theater, night after night, all their mental and moral 
stimulus, and to whom it is the greatest teacher at the most 
susceptible time of their lives — between the ages of seven- 
teen and twenty-five — " 

How many of your analysts of the stage who have writ- 
ten on the Theater and Religion, the Theater and Democ- 
racy, the Theater and the New Spirit, the Theater and the 
New Sociology, the Theater and the What-not, have ever 
stopped to take account of this simple, basic fact, the Thea- 
ter and the Average Age of Theater Audiences? Mr. Barker 
has here gone to the heart of the problem. He has not 
bothered to portion off his public into the recognized classes, 
the Tired Business Man, the Buyer from Peoria, 111., the 
Highbrow, the Lowbrow, the Reformer and the man who 
falls asleep immediately after the rise of the curtain. He 

242 



STANDING ROOM ONLY 243 

has found the formula which cuts horizontally across the 
entire public. To the young and the comparatively untaught 
the theater must make its appeal. The box office would cor- 
roborate him. Older people go to the theater, but they are 
in a minority. If men under twenty-five stopped taking 
women under twenty-five to the show, you might as well shut 
up shop. 

But what does it mean when you say that theater audi- 
ences are made up in the main of people between the ages 
of seventeen and twenty-five? It means that the theater 
must make its principal appeal to men and women in the 
mating season. It means that your audiences do not know, 
and are not concerned with, the realities of life, but are 
very much concerned with romance, with illusion, and most 
intimately with themselves, as the happy inhabitants of the 
very best of all possible worlds. You have to deal not with 
an intellectual audience, but with an emotional audience, 
and one that recognizes only the sweeter emotions. Intel- 
lectually they are apt to be satisfied with " Nellie the Beau- 
tiful Cloak Model." That is, if your young man of twenty- 
five is from Harvard and your young woman of over seven- 
teen from Vassar, you may have to make Nellie a little less 
golden-haired, but Nellie will do. 

Consider the Victrola. Consider the ready-made suit 
jthat is different. Consider the collapsible canoe, the 
patent house paint, the vacuum cleaner, the motor car, the 
chemically pure soap, the sanitary tooth powder, and the 
fireless cooker. Observe how the men who have these com- 
modities to sell and advertise them in the magazines have 
recognized that the strongest appeal is made to men and 



244 WILLIAMS 

women in what I have called the mating season. Nearly 
everything that is advertised in the magazines is made to 
touch on that most susceptible age, the magic age of romance, 
illusion, and quite ridiculous optimism. In the magazine 
pages, only the young dance to the strains of the Victrola. 
The ready-made suit from Chicago is only for young man- 
hood, with a girl exultant over the cut of the collar. The 
collapsible canoe has a girl in it. The vacuum cleaner is 
manipulated by youth and beauty. The patent house paint 
is applied by athletic youth on a ladder under the ecstatic 
gaze of a very young bride. People in middle age presum- 
ably use chemically pure soaps and sanitary tooth-pastes, 
but not in the magazine pages. Always the appeal is to 
youth and romance. Advertisers presumably know that 
when a man and a woman are in love you can sell them any- 
thing. 

How much more true, then, is it that youth must be the 
ultimate consumer in that specialized market of the emotions 
— the theater? When the critic with the horn-rimmed spec- 
tacles sneers at the play that is written for the young man 
and his best girl, it simply shows that something more than 
horn-rimmed spectacles are needed for understanding the 
mission of the drama. Take away the emotions and the out- 
look of the young man and his best girl and you have cut the 
underpinnings from nearly all of your plays, poems, pic- 
tures, and music. So that Mr. Granville Barker, in empha- 
sizing the function of the young in the theater, has done a 
real service. 

Further than this we cannot go with Mr. Barker. If he 
thinks that he can build his cherished theater of Ideas, of 



STANDING ROOM ONLY 245 

Truth, of Life, on this foundation of emotional youth, he is 
sadly mistaken. If he thinks he is going to make his thea- 
ter a school for moral and mental stimulus for men and 
women in their most susceptible age — from seventeen to 
twenty-five — he is wrong. You can teach them before they 
are seventeen; they are not troubled with emotions then 
and are still inclined to recognize authority. You can teach 
them after they are twenty-five, because life has begun to 
teach them at this point and you can help a bit. But you 
cannot teach them between seventeen and twenty-five, be- 
cause they are too busy to learn. They are too happy to be 
taught by tragedy and they are too ignorant for comedy. 
The very suggestion of a theater of ideas for the young is 
absurd. They don't want ideas as long as they have all the 
emotions they can harbor. 

We may put it bluntly, then. If the great mass of your 
theater-goers is twenty-five years of age and less, you may 
as well give up your hopes for a popular theater of Ibsen, 
Shaw, Synge, the soberer Pinero, Shakespeare, and cer- 
tainly Brieux. You cannot have a theater of ideas for the 
young if you will once more stop to think of the Victrola. 

For it must be plain that in this magic time between 
seventeen and twenty-five, this time of illusion, romance, 
faith, and comparative intellectual quiescence, all Victrolas 
emit enchantment, all ready-made suits enshrine Apollo, all 
patent house paints wear for years at an absurdly low initial 
expenditure. Try to imagine a mordant satire of the Vic- 
trola, try to imagine a remorseless expose of the cost of paint- 
ing your own roof, try to imagine an ironic depictment of a 
correspondence course in agriculture, With men and women 



246 WILLIAMS 

in their time of romance the thing can't be done. They don't 
want the truth as long as they have themselves and illusion. 
Your theater of ideas, if it is built, will be built for those 
of us who are more than twenty-five. That is why it can 
not be a very big theater. 



FARMERS 

WILLIAMS said that he viewed with disquiet the 
drift from the farm to the cities. He said the per- 
centage of increase in our urban population since 19 10 was 
unprecedented, especially if you were not careful about your 
decimal points. The other day on the train young Loftus 
figured out that if things continued as they are now the popu- 
lation of the cities in 1930 would be three times the popula- 
tion of the cities and the country combined. And when 
Jennings pointed out that Loftus should have divided in- 
stead of multiplying Loftus said what difference would that 
make as long as our farmers kept taking everything out of 
the soil without putting anything back. 

" You refer," I said, " to the time when there will not be 
enough food raised on our farms to feed the cities? " 

"No," said Williams; "I was thinking of 'Slick Gents' 
up at the Wintergreen." 

Williams said he wasn't quite as stirred up over " Slick 
Gents " as Mrs. Williams was, but he liked it as well as any 
show he had seen for a long time. That was really an ex- 
ceedingly moving scene where young Watkins, after a pretty 
swift career in Wall Street and around Broadway, comes 
back to the old farm in search of his lost health and his 
father's forgiveness. You'd have to go far to find a speci- 
men of kindly wisdom like old Si Watkins. What is it in 
the country air that is so conducive to homely shrewdness 

247 



2 4 8 WILLIAMS 

and a thorough knowledge of the human heart? Williams 
said that if Elihu Root had taken the train for somewhere 
up-State old Jake Simmons would have had that Interna- 
tional Court tangle solved a year ago. 

" This is quite true," I said. " I am fond of the theater 
myself, and I have been repeatedly delighted to hear old 
Hiram Dunker, who has worked his farm for fifty years and 
saved up $411.35, pointing out the secret of success in life 
to his oldest son, who is president of the Parafnne Trust 
Company, in Chicago, with a capital stock of $10,000,000. 
It is refreshing to see Phyllis Boudoir, who has been doing 
Greek dancing in New York since 191 1, learning the secret 
of how to win a man's love permanently from her mother, 
who married in 1876 and has since visited Albany twice. If 
the drift to the city continues I can very well see how the 
American drama will come to an untimely end with the ex- 
haustion of our raw stocks of homely rural wisdom." 

" Don't you think," said Williams, " that the introduc- 
tion of business methods would be of help? " 

" You mean in winning a true man's love? " I said. 

" No," said Williams, " I was thinking of our threatened 
food supply." 

" That," I said, " is a debatable question. It seems to be 
quite true that the homely wisdom of our farmers, which is 
always equal to dealing with life in the lobster palaces and 
on the Stock Exchange, breaks down badly when it comes 
to running a farm. Perhaps the reason is that farmers are 
so occupied in looking after their prodigal children from the 
city that they have little time left for looking after the 
crops. Just the same, there is, at first sight, a good deal 



FARMERS 249 

in the suggestion that what the farmer needs is business 
methods. It is reasonable to suppose that by installing a 
double-entry system and a dictograph the per capita output 
of milk per cow may be notably increased if there is no 
drought. It is quite likely that by installing electric wash- 
ing machines such as the United States Treasury employs 
to launder old banknotes the farmer's wife may afford to 
get up as late as 5:30 mornings. It is quite probable that 
if the farmer adopted the auditing methods employed so 
successfully by the Northeastern Life Insurance Company in 
its 456 branches the farmer might better know where he is 
at, provided it rains." 

" You don't think it is because at heart we all of us long 
for the simple things of life? " said Williams. 

" That our food supply is threatening to fail? " I said. 

" No," said Williams. " I mean why all of us like to see 
those dear old country sages on the stage." 

Some day, it is to be hoped, Williams will learn to listen. 
But that time is not yet in sight. 

" I don't imagine it is so much a longing for the simple 
life as for the different life," I said. " When it comes to 
simplicity, it seems to me that we in the city have been re- 
ducing life to its simplest terms. People usually worry 
about food; but soon there will be no food, as you pointed 
out, and there will be no use in worrying. People usually 
worry about a roof over their heads, but there is no use wor- 
rying, for the city is 40,000 apartments short, and it won't 
do you any good. People worry about dress, but if fashions 
continue to get shorter and tighter there will soon be no 
clothes to worry about. What else is there? Children, to 



250 WILLIAMS 

be sure. Well, that source of worry is rapidly disappearing 
in the city. So you can see how fast the simple life is com- 
ing to town." 

" And you don't think business methods will help? " said 
Williams. 

" In the city? " I said. 

" On the farm," said Williams. 

" I am inclined to think no," I said. 

" But just a little while ago you were inclined to think 
yes," he said. 

" Ah," I said, " a little while ago. Since then conditions 
have changed and I don't quite know what to think. Sub- 
ject to change without notice, I will venture to say that 
on the whole business methods would rather hurt than help. 
Compel the farmer to take to bookkeeping and scientific 
management and you run a chance of failing to get the 
small amount of food we may still expect under the present 
system. Yes, at this moment I feel confident that the 
worst thing you can do is to turn the farmer into a business 
man." 

" You mean he will only make a botch of business meth- 
ods? " said Williams. 

" Quite the contrary," I said. " The more he makes a 
go of business principles the better your chances of starving 
in the city. Teach the farmer auditing and cost accounts 
and what will happen? He will be definitely confirmed in 
what he has always strongly suspected; namely, that farm- 
ing doesn't pay. And what will he do then? He will break 
from his farm with a yell like the monk of Siberia and beat 
it, as young Loftus would say, for town." 



FARMERS 251 

" I grew up on a farm/' said Williams with entire sym- 
pathy. 

" Agriculture is only possible," I said, " by a rigid adher- 
ence to non-business principles. If the price of wheat fell 
and the farmer were a business man, what would he do? He 
would behave like a woolen company and stop work. He 
would let his fields lie idle. Not being a business man, 
what does he do? He growls a bit louder and plows a bit 
deeper and works his wife a good deal harder, and so some- 
how you get your food. Now and then you hear about 
farmers threatening to go on strike and cutting down their 
acreage. And what is the next thing you hear? The big- 
gest corn crop on record, or more hay than you could choke 
all the cows on earth with. You see, somehow the soil is not 
a factory or a salesroom ; it cries to be at work, profit or no 
profit. And the farmer is impelled by all the forces of his 
unbusinesslike nature to dig and sow and reap. He is like 
an ant that must go on laying eggs whether the world needs 
them or not." 

" Does an ant lay eggs? " said Williams. 

" I have never studied the psychology of salesmanship, so 
I don't know," I said. 

Williams regarded me with a touch of what almost looked 
like admiration. 

" I think you would make a bully farmer," he said. 

" I don't believe I have ever handled a hoe in my life," I 
said, blushing. 

" On the stage, I mean," said Williams. 



COMPLEXES IN ORION 

(Written before the death of Bert Leston Taylor at 
Chicago, March 19, 192 1) 

WILLIAMS said he wondered if they had psycho- 
analysis on Betelgeuse. Noticing the look of pain 
on my face, he hastened to explain. He was not hoping 
that they had complexes up there in Orion; he was only 
wondering. On the whole, he was inclined to believe they 
didn't. 

44 Do you read B. L. T.? " I said. 

'* Is it a star? " he said. 

44 It is," I said. " In the Chicago Tribune, and of the 
first magnitude. I don't know whether Prof. Michelson has 
measured the diameter of B. L. T., but this much I know 
about its distance: A ray of light emitted by B. L. T. in 
the Chicago Tribune frequently takes several days before it 
reaches the paragraphers and columnists in other systems. 
But that is not the point." 

44 1 didn't imagine it was," said Williams mildly. " You 
would be getting to it remarkably soon." 

44 Last summer," I said, 44 1 was delegated to attend the 
Republican convention at Chicago. I represented a news- 
paper which had thrown its powerful support to an ideal 
candidate who received five and a half votes in the conven- 
tion out of a possible 984. I am perhaps doing him an in- 

2SZ 



COMPLEXES IN ORION 253 

justice. It may have been six and a half votes. But I am 
approximately correct. That, however, is not the point." 

" But we are getting there," said Williams cheerfully. 

" As usual," I said, " I did not sleep well on the train. 
After that trip, in fact, I could honestly qualify as one of the 
most eminent authorities in the country on night-life in the 
Buffalo train-yards, around the Cleveland round-houses, and 
near the Toledo coal-sheds, if these indeed are the places 
we passed through. That, however, is not the point. The 
point is that after a night spent between looking out in the 
dark and weighing the chances of Lowden, Leonard Wood, 
and Herbert Hoover, dawn came, and, with it, or soon after, 
a newsboy who peddled Chicago Tribunes. And there, at 
the head of the column, B. L. T. bade me welcome to his 
fair city by reprinting his little poem on Canopus." 

" A star, I gather," said Williams. 

" Very nearly the finest poem in the English language," I 
said. " I remember only the last two lines. But this is the 
context: When the politicians and reformers and reaction- 
aries and eugenists and psychoanalysts and other profes- 
sionals begin to beat their tom-toms, and point with pride 
and view with alarm, why, then it is good to turn one's 
thoughts to Canopus: 

" ' A star that has no parallax to speak of 
Conduces to repose.' 

And now you want to take poor Betelgeuse, which is fur- 
ther off than Canopus, and load it up with repressions and 
things." 
" That, I presume, is the point at last," said Williams. 



254 WILLIAMS 

" Williams," I said, somewhat testily, " a ray of light 
emanating from a human intelligence is sure to reach you 
in the course of a couple of hundred years." 

" I was only wondering," said Williams. " If there is life 
on Betelgeuse, it occurred to me that a world 27,000,000 
times the size of the sun would be just about the place 
where a few people might manage to live without suppress- 
ing their own desires or treading on other people's toes." 

" But that is quite an idea," I said with unaffected ad- 
miration. 

Williams was pleased. He said the thing did not come 
to him all at once, but as the result of much reading in 
nervous literature and much reflection. I nodded. Williams 
gets his philosophy by the sweat of his brow. He is not one 
of those keen, dynamic minds with whom thought and deci- 
sion are simultaneous. You lay all the facts before them 
and in a flash they give you the wrong answer. No, Wil- 
liams was not like that. 

" The thing that puzzles me is this," he said. " On the 
one hand, all the miachief in the world comes from clamping 
the lid on your desires. Very well. But when a man doesn't 
hammer down the lid and reaches out after what he wants, 
there is the devil to pay. What is the answer? " 

" Betelgeuse," I said. 

" Just what I had in mind," he said. " Take the Peace 
Conference, for instance." 

" On Betelgeuse," I said. 

" In Paris," he said. " I heard a nice lecture the other 
day. One-half of it was about neurotic discharges and the 
other half was about Upper Silesia, and reparations, and 



COMPLEXES IN ORION 255 

secret diplomacy. That's the way most lectures go now- 
adays. Well, all at once it occurred to me that the Peace 
Conference was 100 per cent, justified by all the laws of 
Freud." 

" No inhibitions and complexes, you mean? " I said. 

" Not a smell of one," said Williams. " The only thing 
that was repressed at Versailles was the reporters. Every- 
body else was spontaneous. Now, just imagine what would 
have happened if the peace makers had behaved the other 
way about. Suppose Clemenceau had repressed his desire 
for the Saar Valley, or Lloyd George had repressed his de- 
sire for the German colonies, or Orlando had repressed his 
desire for Italy's just claims in Kamchatka. These men 
would have been walking complexes for the rest of their 
lives. They might have become insomniacs, or gone stale 
on their golf, or lost their taste for the theater, or something 
equally fatal." 

" Then the Germans, by your reasoning — " I said. 

" Exactly," he said. " Everybody took a hand at repress- 
ing them and the result is that they don't sleep at all. They 
sit up nights calling everybody names. Or take my coal 
dealer. In my thoughtless moments, as I look around the 
cellar, I call him a pirate. But that is a selfish view. Isn't 
it best for the world after all that the coal man should have 
my pocketbook if all his normal instincts pull him that way? 
Repress that fellow's desires for my money and he'll prob- 
ably go home and beat his wife." 

" But Williams," I said, " that's not the way to argue. 
You don't go back far enough; you don't go back at all. 
Does it occur to you that if that coal man hadn't been re- 



256 WILLIAMS 

pressed in some other way he wouldn't now be charging you 
a hysterical price for coal? " 

Williams weighed the point in his own honest fashion. 

" You mean," he said, " that if the coal man had not re- 
frained from beating his wife he wouldn't now be robbing 
me?" 

" Exactly," I said. " Some one has to pay, you see, for 
that coal man's attainment of the full and zestful life; if it 
isn't you, it must be his wife. If a man is not to have fits 
himself, he should be allowed to give somebody else nervous 
prostration. It's the law of compensation. Twenty-five 
years ago we repressed our children altogether too much. 
They were not allowed to eat except what we thought good 
for them. They were not to speak until spoken to. They 
had to go to Sunday school. What is the result? They are 
now grown up and establishing new poetry magazines." 

" That is quite an idea," he said. 

" It is virtually your own," I said, modestly. " And it's 
an idea for parents to keep in mind when they sit down to 
read the paper at night and the young people begin to ham- 
mer down nails or play jazz on the Orpheola. Your first 
impulse is to take the hammer away and send them to bed; 
but remember the consequences." 

" They will grow up repressed," he said. 

" They will," I said. " And that is the bitter alternative 
— whether children shall grow up nervous or parents shall 
be driven crazy." 

Williams looked glumly out of the window. 

" One longs for Betelgeuse," he said. 

" You might try B. L. T.," I suggested. 



FALLACY OF DISTANCE 

WILLIAMS said his objection to the new realism was 
" that it went just as far wrong in one direction as 
Pollyanna did in the other. It is quite true that people are 
often worse than they pretend to be. But had it ever oc- 
curred to me how often people were much better than they 
pretended to be? 

I told Williams that the thought had occurred to the 
author of the Iliad, the Mahabharata, Isaiah, the Platonic 
Dialogues, St. Augustine, the collected works of Shakespeare, 
Browning, and William Dean Howells, and now and then 
it had obtruded itself on my own consciousness. 

" Now take the children in Central Europe," said Wil- 
liams. We were having lunch and he indicated a placard on 
the wall. It had an ingenious arrangement of transparent 
slots, of isinglass presumably, where one might deposit any 
coin from a nickel to a silver dollar and see the total mount 
up into a visible column of so many real meals for so many 
hungry children. 

" For the last seven years," said Williams, " we have been 
giving and giving until people now say thay are tired of 
giving. So they say. What they do, as a matter of fact, is 
to drop half a dollar down the slot — after seven years. Or 
take China. Remind a man of the famine in China and 
he tells you that China is pretty far away and that charity 
should begin nearer home, and why can't the Chinese look 

257 



25 8 WILLIAMS 

after their own sufferers, and that he might as well let you 
have a couple of dollars since somebody in any case would 
take it away from him to relieve somebody in Sumatra." 

Williams said it was all the more strange, this busi- 
ness of saving people in Austria and China because here 
in this big city people seemed to be so little interested in 
their own neighbors. 

" Why should they? " I said. " The chances of anybody 
starving in the next apartment are virtually nil." 

" Do you know the people next door? " said Williams. 

" I know that they take the Times and the World," I said, 
" because I get up rather early on Sundays ; and I know 
that they take three bottles of Grade A. But I have never 
seen them." 

" That is what the city does to the spirit of neighborli- 
ness," said Williams who commutes and tries to practise all 
the primitive virtues. 

" But why should I be neighborly? " I said. " It's dif- 
ferent when it comes to my feelings for the people in China. 
You remember Voltaire's old problem? " 

Williams said he thought I had omitted somebody. 

" Voltaire put this moral problem/' I said. " If you were 
exceedingly hard up, desperately hard up, and if you knew 
that by merely wishing the thing you could kill some rich 
Chinese mandarin 8,000 miles away whom you had never 
seen or heard of and inherit his possessions, would you do 
it? " 

" I would not," said Williams. 

I congratulated him on his excellent bringing up but 
said that was not the point. When Voltaire — if it was Vol- 



FALLACY OF DISTANCE 259 

taire — said a Chinese mandarin he might as well have said 
somebody in Mars. But that was nearly 200 years ago. 
To-day you couldn't wish a Chinese plutocrat to death with- 
out getting yourself into very serious personal difficulties. 
That Chinaman might be the president of a bank, and his 
sudden demise might knock the bottom out of the silk mar- 
ket, and the Far East might be swept by a business panic, 
and silver exchange might be disrupted, and American har- 
vester factories might shut down, and the rest is easy to see. 

" In other words/' I concluded, " the chances are that I 
could more safely destroy somebody in the apartment over 
my own than slay the man in China. As things are, the gen- 
tleman in Peking may be much more my neighbor than the 
man on the same dumb-waiter." 

Williams said I was anti-social. 

I denied the fact. I said that when he preached neigh- 
borliness to a man living in Apartment 5C he was simply 
yielding to the fallacy of distance. He was only indulging 
himself in the common sentimentality which would import 
the simple and real virtues of the open country into town 
where they had little meaning. If people in 5C and 5D 
fail to turn to each other in illness or distress the reason 
is that there is no need. The doctor lives two doors away, 
the drugstore is on the corner, and both are accessible by 
telephone. There is no use in forcing neighborly relations 
upon a neighbor with whom you never run to fires, whom 
you never help in putting up a barn, whom you never join 
in a posse comitatus, with whom you never go out to break 
open the roads in winter, whose lawn-mower you never bor- 
row, whose hens never wander into your garden, whose chil- 



26o WILLIAMS 

dren never steal your apples, and who in every way is per- 
fectly capable of looking after himself. I said the point in 
being neighborly was not proximity but contact. 

Williams said it was a pity just the same. 

I said it was, but not in the sense he meant. There was 
a debt of neighborliness we did owe to a great many people. 
But unfortunately life is so arranged that we seldom strike 
contact with those whose lives touch closely upon our own. 
And I mentioned Central. 

" The telephone girl? " he said. 

I said yes. I wondered if one man in a hundred thou- 
sand in New York knew anything of the girl on his wire ex- 
cept as a voice; and yet she was more essential to his busi- 
ness and his family, to his victories and his sorrows, than 
few neighbors in town or country can ever be to each other. 
Who was this girl that fetched for him doctors and taxicabs, 
who gave him Chicago or the superintendent downstairs, 
who carried his vital business secrets and his conventional 
fibs? Was she tall, short, blue-eyed, red-haired, what? 

And I suggested that instead of the neighborhood system 
we needed something like the Soviet system. 

Williams said mildly that sometimes the telephone did act 
just like that. 

" The Soviet system," I said, " would substitute the oc- 
cupational unit of representation for the geographical unit. 
It would have a Congressman elected not by a group of 
people who happen to live in the same block but who have 
the same economic interest, doctors, or bookkeepers, or 
street-cleaners, or school-teachers; in other words, people 
who have real contacts. 



FALLACY OF DISTANCE 261 

" But what do I know of the people who work for me and 
with me? Central is not alone. She is one of a group of 
Voices, Noises, Bells, Knocks, Shuffles, which make up the 
great Unknown of my real neighbors. While it is still dark 
I am roused to a greater enjoyment of my warm bed by the 
clink of bottles in the hall. It is the milkman whom I have 
never seen. A slide and a thud outside the door is the news- 
paper carrier. I get up and shave in hot water provided 
by a furnace man who once a year at Christmas time be- 
comes a voice up the dumb-waiter, but nothing else. You 
commuters know your engine driver, and Mr. Harding has 
revived Mr. Roosevelt's human habit of shaking hands with 
him at the end of a journey. But I don't know my motor- 
man except as the occasional fleeting shadow of a striped 
jumper and a gray mustache. I know nothing whatever 
of the lady in Wanamaker's who sends my change up in a 
tube. Here is an army of men and women who every day 
hold my comfort, my health, and my life in their hands, but 
I do not know them. Whereas my next-door neighbor has 
nothing in common with me." 

" But how do you know? " said Williams. 



THE END 



